Pearl S. Buck

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.

There is an alchemy in sorrow. It can be transmuted into wisdom, which, if it does not bring joy, can yet bring happiness.

Truth is always exciting. Speak it, then, Life is dull without it.

The lack of emotional security of our American young people is due, I believe, to their isolation from the larger family unit. No two people - no mere father and mother - as I have often said, are enough to provide emotional security for a child. He needs to feel himself one in a world of kinfolk, persons of variety in age and temperament, and yet allied to himself by an indissoluble bond which he cannot break if he could, for nature has welded him into it before he was born.

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

At my age the bones are water in the morning until food is given them.

Nothing in life is as good as the marriage of true minds between man and woman. As good? It is life itself.

Inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that's where you renew your springs that never dry up.

Order is the shape upon which beauty depends.

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

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

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

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.

Teaching is as sacred as priesthood. If one has not the concern for humanity, the love of living creatures, the vision of the priest and artist, he must not teach.