Pearl S. Buck
Novelist
1892-06-26
Quotes by Pearl S. Buck
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Somehow I had learned from Thoreau, who doubtless learned it from Confucius, that if a man comes to do his own good for you, then must you flee that man and save yourself
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This was his mind, a storehouse, a computer programmed to life, minute by minute, hour by hour, day and night.
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Wang Lung sat smoking, thinking of the silver as it had lain upon the table. It had come out of the earth, this silver, out of the earth that he ploughed and turned and spent himself upon. He took his life from the earth; drop by drop by his sweat he wrung food from it and from the food, silver. Each time before this that he had taken the silver out to give to anyone, it had been like taking a piece of his life and giving it to someone carelessly. But not for the first time, such giving was not pain. He saw, not the silver in the alien hand of a merchant in the town; he saw the silver transmuted into something worth even more than life itself - clothes upon the body of his son.
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A good marriage is one which allows for change and growth in the individuals and in the way they express their love.
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To those at the great house it means nothing, this handful of earth, but to me it means how much! (Buck, 57)
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The mistakes of history bring relentless reprisals.
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He saw on the paper a picture of a man, white-skinned, who hung upon a crosspiece of wood. The man was without clothes except for a bit about his loins, and to all appearences he was dead, since his head drooped upon his shoulder and his eyes were closed above his bearded lips. Wang Lung looked at the pictured man in horror and with increasing interest.
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Men and women should own the world as a mutual possession.
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It is better to be first with an ugly woman than the hundreth with a beauty.
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We must learn to live with danger, he now said to Kino. Do you mean the ocean and the volcano cannot hurt us if we are not afraid? Kino asked. No, his father replied. I did not say that. Ocean is there and volcano is there. It is true that on any day ocean may rise into storm and volcano may burst into flame. We must accept this fact, but without fear. We must say, 'Someday I shall die, and does it matter whether it is by ocean or volcano, or whether I grow old and weak?' I don't want to think about such things, Kino said. it is right for you not to think about them, his father said. Then do not be afraid. When you are afraid, you are thinking about them all the time. Enjoy life and don not fear death - that is the way of a good Japanese.
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Fear alone makes man weak. If you are afraid, your hands tremble, your feet falter, and your brain cannot tell hands and feet what to do.
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I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.
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I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in human beings.
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Now, five years is nothing in a man's life except when he is very young and very old...- Wang Lung
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I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in the kindness of human beings. I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and angels.
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Love cannot be forced, love cannot be coaxed and teased. It comes out of heaven, unasked and unsought.
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I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in the kindness of human beings. I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and angels.
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I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.
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The mistakes of history bring relentless reprisals.
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Wang Lung sat smoking, thinking of the silver as it had lain upon the table. It had come out of the earth, this silver, out of the earth that he ploughed and turned and spent himself upon. He took his life from the earth; drop by drop by his sweat he wrung food from it and from the food, silver. Each time before this that he had taken the silver out to give to anyone, it had been like taking a piece of his life and giving it to someone carelessly. But not for the first time, such giving was not pain. He saw, not the silver in the alien hand of a merchant in the town; he saw the silver transmuted into something worth even more than life itself - clothes upon the body of his son.
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