Pearl S. Buck Quotes - Page 3

If our American way of life fails the child, it fails us all.

the vicious result of privilege is that the creature who receives it becomes incapacitated by it as by a disease.

When men destroy their old gods they will find new ones to take their place.

The head raised too high even in good will be struck off too soon.

A person's heart withers if it does not answer another heart.

To eat bread without hope is still slowly to starve to death.

On this earth, though far and near, without love, there's only fear.

One faces the future with one's past.

Most mothers kiss and scold together.

As for New York City, it is a place apart. There is not its match in any other country in the world.

to know how to read is to light a lamp in the mind, to release the soul from prison, to open a gate to the universe." from Pavilion of Women page 292

All birth is unwilling.

The truth has never been told about women in history: that everywhere man has gone woman has gone too, and what he has done she has done also. Women are ignorant of their own past and ignorant of their own importance in that past.

though some men did not make war as others did, if they sold their goods for profit to the war-makers, did it make them better because the weapon was not in their own hands, if they had made the weapon and sold it and so put it into the hands of those used it upon the innocent?

There are many ways of breaking a heart. Stories were full of hearts broken by love, but what really broke a heart was taking away its dream -- whatever that dream might be.

Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied.

If I have learned anything in my long life it is to be grateful for every occasion when I followed my sympathies and avoided my antipathies.

there's two kinds of folk in the world, just like there's two kinds of life in a seed. Something sends one kind up to hunt its food in the light and air, and sends the other kind down into the earth to make the roots.

doing and being are very closely tied together, and unless you are doing what you secretly want to do, you aren't able to be the sort of person you want to be.

Prejudice ... is a subjective emotion which expresses itself upon others only because of an inner necessity for release. The object is irrelevant and opportune. The person who feels prejudice is the victim of himself and his own unhappiness and dissatisfaction. Life is not what he wants it to be and it has not been what he wishes it had been.

In this unbelievable universe in which we live, there are no absolutes. Even parallel lines, reaching into infinity, meet somewhere yonder.

What is a neglected child? He is a child not planned for, not wanted. Neglect begins, therefore, before he is born.

When we know what we want to prove, we go out and find our facts. They are always there.

The community must assume responsibility for each child within its confines. Not one must be neglected whatever his condition. The community must see that every child gets the advantages and opportunities which are due him as a citizen and as a human being.

A knowledge of history as detailed as possible is essential if we are to comprehend the present and be prepared for the future. Fate...is not the blind superstition or helplessness that waits stupidly for what may happen. Fate is unalterable only in the sense that given a cause, a certain result must follow, but no cause is inevitable in itself, and man can shape his world if he does not resign himself to ignorance.