Pearl S. Buck (Writer)

An intelligent, energetic, educated woman cannot be kept in four walls — even satin-lined, diamond-studded walls — without discovering sooner or later that they are still a prison cell.

— Pearl S. Buck man

There will be no real content among American women unless they are made and kept more ignorant or unless they are given equal opportunity with men to use what they have been taught. And American men will not be really happy until their women are.

— Pearl S. Buck women

A man is educated and turned out to work. But a woman is educated — and turned out to grass.

— Pearl S. Buck work

Profound as race prejudice is against the Negro American, it is not practically as far-reaching as the prejudice against women. For stripping away the sentimentality which makes Mother’s Day and Best American Mother Contests, the truth is that women suffer all the effects of a minority.

— Pearl S. Buck truth

Men and women should own the world as a mutual possession.

— Pearl S. Buck women

It is a shameful sign of our arrogance that our history departments have almost no Chinese history in them, our literature courses almost no Chinese literature, our philosophy departments almost none of the great Chinese systems of philosophy. And our religious schools have been the most arrogant of all. This ignorant arrogant mind has become fixed in its patterns. It is the pattern which considers anything not American to be inferior — unless it be English.

— Pearl S. Buck philosophy

Euthanasia is a long, smooth-sounding word, and it conceals its danger as long, smooth words do, but the danger is there, nevertheless.

— Pearl S. Buck words

Because psychologists have been able to discover, exactly as in a slow-motion picture, the way the human creature acquires knowledge and habits, the normal child has been vastly helped by what the retarded have taught us.

— Pearl S. Buck knowledge

I love people. I love my family, my children ... but inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that's where you renew your springs that never dry up.

— Pearl S. Buck love

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

— Pearl S. Buck possible

One does not live half a life in Asia without return. When it would be I did not know, nor even where it would be, or to what cause. In our changing world nothing changes more than geography. The friendly country of China, the home of my childhood and youth, is for the time being forbidden country. I refuse to call it enemy country. The people in my memory are too kind and the land too beautiful.

— Pearl S. Buck life

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

— Pearl S. Buck child

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

— Pearl S. Buck joy

Nothing and no one can destroy the Chinese people. They are relentless survivors. They are the oldest civilized people on earth. Their civilization passes through phases but its basic characteristics remain the same. They yield, they bend to the wind, but they never break.

— Pearl S. Buck art

Ah well, perhaps one has to be very old before one learns how to be amused rather than shocked.

— Pearl S. Buck learn

There was an old abbot in one temple and he said something of which I think often and it was this, that when men destroy their old gods they will find new ones to take their place.

— Pearl S. Buck god

The truth is always exciting. Speak it, then. Life is dull without it.

— Pearl S. Buck truth

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

— Pearl S. Buck you

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. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create — so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.

— Pearl S. Buck love

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.

— Pearl S. Buck life

The Chinese novel was written primarily to amuse the common people. And when I say amuse I do not mean only to make them laugh, though laughter is also one of the aims of the Chinese novel. I mean amusement in the sense of absorbing and occupying the whole attention of the mind. I mean enlightening that mind by pictures of life and what that life means.

— Pearl S. Buck life

Did one man write , or did it grow to its present shape, added to, rearranged, deepened and developed by many minds and many a hand, in different centuries? Who can now tell? They are dead. They lived in their day and wrote what in their day they saw and heard, but of themselves they have told nothing.

— Pearl S. Buck mind

Strangely enough, there were certain scholars who envied the freedom of obscurity, and who, burdened with certain private sorrows which they dared not tell anyone, or who perhaps wanting only a holiday from the weariness of the sort of art they had themselves created, wrote novels too, under assumed and humble names. And when they did so they put aside pedantry and wrote as simply and naturally as any common novelist. For the novelist believed that he should not be conscious of techniques. He should write as his material demanded.

— Pearl S. Buck freedom

A good novelist, or so I have been taught in China, should be above all else tse ran, that is, natural, unaffected, and so flexible and variable as to be wholly at the command of the material that flows through him. His whole duty is only to sort life as it flows through him, and in the vast fragmentariness of time and space and event to discover essential and inherent order and rhythm and shape. We should never be able, merely by reading pages, to know who wrote them, for when the style of a novelist becomes fixed, that style becomes his prison. The Chinese novelists varied their writing to accompany like music their chosen themes.

— Pearl S. Buck life

These Chinese novels are not perfect according to Western standards. They are not always planned from beginning to end, nor are they compact, any more than life is planned or compact. They are often too long, too full of incident, too crowded with character, a medley of fact and fiction as to material, and a medley of romance and realism as to method, so that an impossible event of magic or dream may be described with such exact semblance of detail that one is compelled to belief against all reason

— Pearl S. Buck life

Out of this folk mind, turned into stories and crowded with thousands of years of life, grew, literally, the Chinese novel. For these novels changed as they grew. If, as I have said, there are no single names attached beyond question to the great novels of China, it is because no one hand wrote them. From beginning as a mere tale, a story grew through succeeding versions, into a structure built by many hands.

— Pearl S. Buck life

The people of China forged their own literature apart from letters. And today this is what lives, to be part of what is to come, and all the formal literature, which was called art, is dead. The plots of these novels are often incomplete, the love interest is often not brought to solution, heroines are often not beautiful and heroes often are not brave. Nor has the story always an end; sometimes it merely stops, in the way life does, in the middle of it when death is not expected. In this tradition of the novel have I been born and reared as a writer.

— Pearl S. Buck love

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.

— Pearl S. Buck women

Story belongs to the people. They are sounder judges of it than anyone else, for their senses are unspoiled and their emotions are free.

— Pearl S. Buck people

Race prejudice is not only a shadow over the colored — it is a shadow over all of us, and the shadow is darkest over those who feel it least and allow its evil effects to go on.

— Pearl S. Buck evil

None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free.

— Pearl S. Buck hope

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

— Pearl S. Buck men

It may be that religion is dead, and if it is, we had better know it and set ourselves to try to discover other sources of moral strength before it is too late.

— Pearl S. Buck religion

Read as a This I Believe radio broadcast in 1951 (some remarks from this essay have sometimes been cited as being from 1939).

— Pearl S. Buck time

The power to spring up is inherent, and only death puts an end to it. I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in human beings.

— Pearl S. Buck death

I enjoy life because I am endlessly interested in people and their growth. My interest leads me to widen my knowledge of people, and this in turn compels me to believe in the common goodness of mankind. I believe that the normal human heart is born good. That is, it’s born sensitive and feeling, eager to be approved and to approve, hungry for simple happiness and the chance to live. It neither wishes to be killed, nor to kill. If through circumstances, it is overcome by evil, it never becomes entirely evil. There remain in it elements of good, however recessive, which continue to hold the possibility of restoration.

— Pearl S. Buck life

I believe in human beings, but my faith is without sentimentality. I know that in environments of uncertainty, fear, and hunger, the human being is dwarfed and shaped without his being aware of it, just as the plant struggling under a stone does not know its own condition. Only when the stone is removed can it spring up freely into the light. But the power to spring up is inherent, and only death puts an end to it. I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in human beings.

— Pearl S. Buck death

The common sense of people will surely prove to them someday that mutual support and cooperation are only sensible for the security and happiness of all.

— Pearl S. Buck happiness

Like Confucius of old, I am absorbed in the wonder of earth, and the life upon it, and I cannot think of heaven and the angels. I have enough for this life. If there is no other life, than this one has been enough to make it worth being born, myself a human being. With so profound a faith in the human heart and its power to grow toward the light, I find here reason and cause enough for hope and confidence in the future of mankind.

— Pearl S. Buck life

The common sense of people will surely prove to them someday that mutual support and cooperation are only sensible for the security and happiness of all. Such faith keeps me continually ready and purposeful with energy to do what one person can towards shaping the environment in which the human being can grow with freedom.

— Pearl S. Buck happiness

In the midst of possible world war, of wholesale destruction, I find my only question this: are there enough people now who believe? Is there time enough left for the wise to act? It is a contest between ignorance and death, or wisdom and life. My faith in humanity stands firm.

— Pearl S. Buck life

My Several Worlds : A Personal Record (1954)

— Pearl S. Buck world

I learned early to understand that there is no such condition in human affairs as absolute truth. There is only truth as people see it, and truth, even in fact, may be kaleidoscopic in its variety...

— Pearl S. Buck truth

I became mentally bifocal, and so I learned early to understand that there is no such condition in human affairs as absolute truth. There is only truth as people see it, and truth, even in fact, may be kaleidoscopic in its variety. The damage such perception did to me I have felt ever since, although damage may be too dark a word, for it merely meant that I could never belong entirely to one side of any question. To be a Communist would be absurd to me, as absurd as to be entirely anything and equally impossible. I straddled the globe too young.

— Pearl S. Buck truth

Every event has had its cause, and nothing, not the least wind that blows, is accident or causeless. To understand what happens now one must find the cause, which may be very long ago in its beginning, but is surely there, and therefore a knowledge of history as detailed as possible is essential if we are to comprehend the present and be prepared for the future. Fate, Mr. Kung taught me, 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.

— Pearl S. Buck knowledge

In any war a victory means another war, and yet another, until some day inevitably the tides turn, and the victor is the vanquished, and the circle reverses itself, but remains nevertheless a circle. ... I came home more torn in heart than any child should be, for I saw that each side was right as well as wrong, and I yearned over both in a helpless fashion, unable to see how, history being what it was, anything now could be done.

— Pearl S. Buck war

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

— Pearl S. Buck words

The wild winds had been sown and the whirlwinds were gathering... and I was reaping what I had not sown... None of us could escape the history of the centuries before any of us had been born, and with which we had nothing to do. We had not, I think, ever committed even a mild unkindness against a Chinese, and certainly we had devoted ourselves to justice for them, we had taken sides against our own race again and again for their sakes, sensitive always to injustices which others had committed and were still committing. But nothing mattered today, neither the kindness nor the cruelty. We were in hiding for our lives because we were white.

— Pearl S. Buck history

There is something to be said for losing one’s possessions, after nothing can be done about it. I had loved my Nanking home and the little treasures it had contained, the lovely garden I had made, my life with friends and students. Well, that was over. I had nothing at all now except the old clothes I stood in. I should have felt sad, and I was quite shocked to realize that I did not feel sad at all. On the contrary, I had a lively sense of adventure merely at being alive and free, even of possessions. No one expected anything of me. I had no obligations, no duties, no tasks. I was nothing but a refugee, someone totally different from the busy young woman I had been. I did not even care that the manuscript of my novel was lost. Since everything else was gone, why not that?

— Pearl S. Buck love

I am an inveterate homemaker, it is at once my pleasure, my recreation, and my handicap. Were I a man, my books would have been written in leisure, protected by a wife and a secretary and various household officials. As it is, being a woman, my work has had to be done between bouts of homemaking.

— Pearl S. Buck books

Chinese were born, it seemed to me, with an accumulated wisdom, a natural sophistication, an intelligent naivet

— Pearl S. Buck wisdom

Yet somehow our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is in the way that it cares for its helpless members.

— Pearl S. Buck fear

We are not empire builders. How important this fact is no American who has not lived in Asia can appreciate. It goes against our conscience, which is a very tender part of the American spirit. Therefore we are learning how to hold our allies, not by force of arms and government, but by mutual benefit and friendship. So much is already clear... I am therefore hopeful. In spite of dismaying contradictions in individuals in our national scene, I feel the controlling spirit or our people, generous, decent, and sane. In this mood of faith and hope my work goes on. A ream of fresh paper lies on my desk waiting for the next book. I am a writer and I take up my pen to write.

— Pearl S. Buck hope

Praise out of season, or tactlessly bestowed, can freeze the heart as much as blame.

— Pearl S. Buck art

The bitterest creature under heaven is the wife who discovers that her husband’s bravery is only bravado, that his strength is only a uniform, that his power is but a gun in the hands of a fool.

— Pearl S. Buck power

The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration.

— Pearl S. Buck inspiration

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

— Pearl S. Buck hope

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

— Pearl S. Buck self

Order is the shape upon which beauty depends.

— Pearl S. Buck beauty

Growth itself contains the germ of happiness.

— Pearl S. Buck happiness

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

— Pearl S. Buck joy

Some are kissing mothers and some are scolding mothers, but it is love just the same, and most mothers kiss and scold together.

— Pearl S. Buck love

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

— Pearl S. Buck joy

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

— Pearl S. Buck you

Our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members.

— Pearl S. Buck fear

Race prejudice is not only a shadow over the colored it is a shadow over all of us, and the shadow is darkest over those who feel it least and allow its evil effects to go on.

— Pearl S. Buck evil

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.

— Pearl S. Buck life

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

— Pearl S. Buck people

Hunger makes a thief of any man.

— Pearl S. Buck man

Love dies only when growth stops.

— Pearl S. Buck growth

Let woman out of the home, let man into it, should be the aim of education. The home needs man, and the world outside needs woman.

— Pearl S. Buck education

A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God's truth is attacked and yet would remain silent.

— Pearl S. Buck truth

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

— Pearl S. Buck self

You can judge your age by the amount of pain you feel when you come in contact with a new idea.

— Pearl S. Buck pain

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.

— Pearl S. Buck work

A good marriage is one which allows for change and growth in the individuals and in the way they express their love.

— Pearl S. Buck love

Love alone could waken love.

— Pearl S. Buck love

Truth is always exciting. Speak it, then; life is dull without it.

— Pearl S. Buck life

Self-expression must pass into communication for its fulfillment.

— Pearl S. Buck men

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

— Pearl S. Buck life

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

— Pearl S Buck happiness

Perhaps one has to be very old before one learns how to be amused rather than shocked.

— Pearl S Buck learn

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