American novelist (1892-1973)
The truth is always exciting. Speak it, then. Life is dull without it.
PEARL S. BUCK
New York Times, October 19, 1941
The person who has lived the most is not the one who has lived the longest, but the one with the richest experiences.
PEARL S. BUCK
New York Times, December 15, 1946
Men and women should own the world as a mutual possession.
PEARL S. BUCK
Of Men and Women
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
"America's Medieval Women", Harper's Magazine, August 1938
I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in human beings.
PEARL S. BUCK
This I Believe
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
My Several Worlds
What is a neglected child? He is a child not planned for, not wanted. Neglect begins, therefore, before he is born.
PEARL S. BUCK
Children for Adoption
All things are possible until they are proved impossible -- and even the impossible may only be so, as of now.
PEARL S. BUCK
A Bridge for Passing
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
To My Daughters, With 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
The Joy of Children
Order is the shape upon which beauty depends.
PEARL S. BUCK
To My Daughters, With Love
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
China, Past and Present
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
To My Daughters, With Love
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
My Several Worlds
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
New York Post, 26 April 1959
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
The Chinese Novel
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
To My Daughters, With Love
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
Harper's Magazine, August 1938
Chinese are wise in comprehending without many words what is inevitable and inescapable and therefore only to be borne.
PEARL S. BUCK
My Several Worlds
And roots, if they are to bear fruits, must be kept well in the soil of the land.
PEARL S. BUCK
The Good Earth