Pearl S. Buck Quotes

You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel, but you can make yourself do right in spite of your feelings.

Many people lose the small joys in the hope for the big happiness.

The test of a civilization is in the way that it cares for its helpless members

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

To find joy in work is to discover the fountain of youth.

Exclusion is always dangerous. Inclusion is the only safety if we are to have a peaceful world.

Once the 'what' is decided, the 'how' always follows. We must not make the 'how' an excuse for not facing and accepting the 'what.'

The secret of joy in work is contained in one word - excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.

When good people in any country cease their vigilance and struggle, then evil men prevail.

Inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that is where I renew my springs that never dry up.

Truth is always exciting. Speak it, then. Life is dull without it.

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

The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible - and achieve it, generation after generation.

It is love itself that is important -- the ability to love, no matter whom you love. For when you can no longer love anyone, you are no longer a living person. The heart dies if it loses the capacity to love.

Only the brave should teach....Teaching is a vocation. It is as sacred as priesthood; as innate a desire, as inescapable as the genius which compels a great artist. If he has not the concern for humanity, the love of living creatures, the vision of the priest and the artist, he must not teach.

the heart never grows old.

If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday.

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

The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him... a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death.

None but the ignorant can be bored by life. To the lovers of learning, life is pure adventure shared with adventurers.

Life is the wonder with which we are all infused.

There is an alchemy in sorrow. It can be transmuted into wisdom, which, if it does not bring joy, can yet bring happiness.

It is good to know our universe. What is new is only new to us.

The boundary between civilization and barbarism is difficult to draw: put one ring in your nose and you are a savage, put two rings in your ears and you are civilized.

A foreigner is a friend I have yet to meet.