Pearl S. Buck

You cannot be happy until you understand that life is sad

The street is noisy and the men and women are not perfect in the technique of their expression as the statues are. They are ugly and imperfect, incomplete even as human beings, and where they come from and where they go cannot be known. But they are people and therefore infinitely to be preferred to those who stand upon the pedestals of art.

Love cannot be forced, love cannot be coaxed and teased. It comes out of heaven, unasked and unsought.

All things are possible until they are proven impossible.

There was no need to hurry that future — yet the length of his own youth pressed upon him. Whatever he was to do next he wanted to begin now. But how to begin and on what?

All things are possible until they are proved impossible — and even the impossible may only be so, as of now.

I should like to penetrate your mind with my own,” he said. “I should like to pierce the mysteries of your soul.

"Well, and they must all starve if the plants starve." 'It was true that all their lives depended upon the earth' (Buck, 71).

In silence they lay close, without passion, but closer than passion could bring them they lay close.

The days of my youth are past and to a woman full grown a kiss means everything — or nothing.

When foreigners come into a nation, the best way is to make them no longer foreign. That is to say, let us marry our young together and let there be children. War is costly, love is cheap.

I grew up believing that the novel has nothing to do with pure literature. So I was taught by scholars. The art of literature, so I was taught, is something devised by men of learning. Out of the brains of scholars came rules to control the rush of genius, that wild fountain which has its source in deepest life. Genius, great or less, is the spring, and art is the sculptured shape, classical or modern, into which the waters must be forced, if scholars and critics were to be served. But the people of China did not so serve. The waters of the genius of story gushed out as they would, however the natural rocks allowed and the trees persuaded, and only common people came and drank and found rest and pleasure. For the novel in China was the peculiar product of the common people. And it was solely their property.

To serve is beautiful, but only if it is done with joy and a whole heart and a free mind.

I don't know whether Abraham Lincoln knew exactly what he was doing when he freed the slaves. Perhaps he did it only as a war measure. The war, you remember, dragged along without any heart in it. Nobody seemed to want to fight. There was everything to fight for- the Union, the preservation of a country whole- but the idea of union, even of country, did not seem enough to make men want to fight... There were even plenty of people, accustomed to the small compact nations of Europe, who thought that perhaps this great expanse of America should not be one country, that it might be better if it were divided into nations instead of states. But others were determined that the continual bickering and quarreling between the little nations of Europe should not be repeated here and they were determined to keep the country whole and large, and among these was Abraham Lincoln.

Chinese are wise in comprehending without many words what is inevitable and inescapable and therefore only to be borne.