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Portrait of Pearl S. Buck

Pearl S. Buck

(1892–1973) Children's Writer United States

304 quotes in 1137 categories

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Pearl S. Buck was a children's writer from the United States, best known for The Good Earth.

Quick Facts About Pearl S. Buck

Born: June 26, 1892
Died: March 6, 1973
Nationality: United States
Profession: Children's Writer
Notable works: The Good Earth
Known for: Imperial Woman, The Good Earth, Peony, A House Divided, China Sky
Spouse: Richard J. Walsh

About Pearl S. Buck

The Good Earth was the best‑selling novel in the United States in 1931 and 1932. In 1938 she became the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature for her vivid descriptions of peasant life in China and for two memoir‑biographies of her missionary parents.

Awards & Honors

Nobel Prize in Literature Pulitzer Prize for the Novel National Women's Hall of Fame William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Horatio Alger Award

Quotes by Pearl S. Buck · Page 2

The rich are always afraid.

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“Mind and body were well or ill together.”

Body

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“It was Wang Lung's marriage day.”

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All birth is unwilling.

Birth

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“But the boy only muttered bitterly,

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A foreigner is a friend I have yet to meet.

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Love alone could waken love.

Love

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Believing in gods always causes confusion.

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

Feminism

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

All alone

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men cannot be free in a nation where women are forbidden freedom.

Feminism

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“I reminded myself that time takes care of many things. Asia had thought me that.”

Asia

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No daughter is ever her mother's darling. That spot is always reserved for the son.

Children

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Life is the wonder with which we are all infused.

Curiosity

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Order is the shape upon which beauty depends.

Beauty

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

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For our democracy has been marred by imperialism, and it has been enlightened only by individual and sporadic efforts at freedom.

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“There was no need to hurry that future—yet the length of his own youth pressed upon him. Whatever he was to do…

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It is better to learn early of the inevitable depths, for then sorrow and death can take their proper place in life,…

Death

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

Failure

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“It is easy to destroy, but it is hard to create. Do not destroy what your brother creates.”

Brother

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From that house there has come so much life that it ought never to die or fall into ruin... For me that…

America

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At heart a truly modest man, he had nevertheless the modest man's pride in his modesty in the face of achievement.

Achievement

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“To take each day as a separate page, to be read carefully, savoring all of the details, this is best for me,…

Books

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“Know thy neighbor as thyself. That is, comprehend his hardships and understand his position, deal with his faults as gently as with…

Neighbor

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People on the whole are very simple-minded, in whatever country one finds them. They are so simple as to take literally, more…

Country

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The main barrier between East and West today is that the white man is not willing to give up his superiority and…

Barriers

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The highest civilizations -- the longest to last and I believe the most successful in human terms -- are those which have…

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“For he came to perceive that since people were his study, his teachers, the objects through which he could satisfy his persistent…

Education

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He was part of a whole, a people scattered over the earth and yet eternally one and indivisible. Wherever a Jew lived,…

Earth

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The bitterest creature under heaven is the wife who discovers that her husband's bravery is only bravado, that his strength is only…

Bitterest

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A favorite means of escaping the solution to any problem is to declare it too complex for solution. This absolves us from…

Acceptance

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“Somewhere in the periphery of his mind and consciousness was the warning that Russia must be watched. For hundreds of years Russia…

Psychology

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“I would ask my teacher a question," Yehonala said. "Ask," Lady Miao replied. She was brushing fine quick strokes upon a large…

Teacher

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I know that the only completely happy life for man and for woman is their life, first together, and then with their…

Believer

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“How can school help you with the land?" he asked. An old grandfather leaned out of the shadows to make answer. "Learning…

Books

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“Out of the woman's great brown breast the milk gushed forth for the child, milk as white as snow, and when the…

Children

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“...the relationships between the five elements. What are the five elements? They are wood, fire, earth, metal, water. These create, and also…

Creation and destruction

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Just about everything significant in my life happened after I passed forty. I was a housewife and mother, but yearned to be…

Career

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“Brave young American men climbed the rugged slopes of Korean mountains and fought in homesickness and desperate weariness for the sake of…

Courage

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Pearl S. Buck by topic

Men (39) Life (37) Love (26) People (23) Psychology (21) Time (18) Mind (17) Children (17) World (16) Nature (15) Books (15) Inspirational (14) Humans (14) Country (13) Parenting (12) Heart (11) Earth (11)