American novelist (1892-1973)
To eat bread without hope is still slowly to starve to death.
PEARL S. BUCK
To My Daughters, With Love
The test of a civilization is in the way that it cares for its helpless members.
PEARL S. BUCK
My Several Worlds: A Personal Record
It is difficult not to wonder whether that combination of elements which produces a machine for labor does not create also a soul of sorts, a dull resentful metallic will, which can rebel at times.
PEARL S. BUCK
My Several Worlds: A Personal Record
The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible, and achieve it, generation after generation.
PEARL S. BUCK
New York Times, December 2, 1956
You cannot be happy until you understand that life is sad.
PEARL S. BUCK
Peony: A Novel of China
The greatest blow for freedom that was ever struck in the world's history, perhaps, was when Abraham Lincoln decided that the slaves of the South were to be free and he freed them. The South collapsed. The gentlemen who could spend their time fighting, sure of supplies from slave-tended lands, began to starve and go ragged. Their homes began to fall into ruin and their families to be hungry. Their morale was broken. The war was really won by the pen upon the paper which wrote these words, "are and henceforward shall be free."
PEARL S. BUCK
What America Means to Me
The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.
PEARL S. BUCK
New York Times, August 5, 1945
Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied.
PEARL S. BUCK
What America Means to Me
A man is educated and turned out to work. But a woman is educated -- and turned out to grass.
PEARL S. BUCK
Of Men and Women
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
What America Means to Me
Endurance of inescapable sorrow is something which has to be learned alone. And only to endure is not enough. Endurance can be a harsh and bitter root in one's life, bearing poisonous and gloomy fruit, destroying other lives. Endurance is only the beginning. There must be acceptance and the knowledge that sorrow fully accepted brings its own gifts. For there is an alchemy in sorrow. It can be transmuted into wisdom, which, if it does not bring joy, can yet bring happiness.
PEARL S. BUCK
The Child Who Never Grew
Ah well, perhaps one has to be very old before one learns how to be amused rather than shocked.
PEARL S. BUCK
China, Past and Present
For 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 -- to create -- to create -- so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of beauty and meaning his very breath is cut off from him. He must create. He must pour out creation. By some strange unknown pressing inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.
PEARL S. BUCK
lecture at the University of Chicago, "The Creative Mind at Work", January 1935
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
What America Means to Me
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.
PEARL S. BUCK
New York Times, November 22, 1942
To serve is beautiful, but only if it is done with joy and a whole heart and a free mind.
PEARL S. BUCK
interview, New York Times, January 5, 1936
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
This I Believe
Praise out of season, or tactlessly bestowed, can freeze the heart as much as blame.
PEARL S. BUCK
To My Daughters, With Love
You can judge your age by the amount of pain you feel when you come in contact with a new idea.
PEARL S. BUCK
interview, New York Times, November 16, 1947
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
To My Daughters, With Love