Top 250 Pearl S. Buck Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “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

Featured in: Action Quotes, Morality Quotes, Peace Quotes, Quotes About Feelings, Anxiety Quotes

2. “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

Featured in: Friday Quotes for Work, Willpower Quotes, Efficiency Quotes, Consistency Quotes, Duty Quotes

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

— Pearl S. Buck

Featured in: Friday Quotes for Work, Fulfillment Quotes, Satisfaction Quotes, Joy Quotes, Monday Quotes

4. “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

Featured in: Mastery Quotes, Tuesday Work Quotes

5. “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

Featured in: Broken Heart Quotes

6. “I don’t wait for moods – you’d never get anything done if you did.”

— Pearl S. Buck

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

— Pearl S. Buck

8. “The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible – and achieve it, generation after generation.”

— Pearl S. Buck

9. “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

10. “Love cannot be forced, love cannot be coaxed and teased. It comes out of heaven, unasked and unsought.”

— Pearl S. Buck

11. “If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday.”

— Pearl S. Buck

12. “Life is stronger than death.”

— Pearl S. Buck

13. “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

14. “In our changing world nothing changes more than geography.”

— Pearl S. Buck

15. “To serve is beautiful, but only if it is done with joy and a whole heart and a free mind.”

— Pearl S. Buck

16. “None but the ignorant can be bored by life. To the lovers of learning, life is pure adventure shared with adventurers.”

— Pearl S. Buck

Featured in: Adventure Quotes

17. “Self-expression must pass into communication for its fulfillment.”

— Pearl S. Buck

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

— Pearl S. Buck

Featured in: Country Quotes

19. “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

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

— Pearl S. Buck

21. “Well I know I am ugly and cannot be loved –.”

— Pearl S. Buck

22. “Life without idealism is empty indeed. We just hope or starve to death.”

— Pearl S. Buck

23. “Perhaps one has to be very old before one learns to be amused rather than shocked.”

— Pearl S. Buck

24. “Integrity is honesty carried through the fibres of the being and the whole mind, into thought as well as action so that the person is complete in honesty. That kind of integrity I put above all else as an essential to leadership.”

— Pearl S. Buck

25. “A person’s heart withers if it does not answer another heart.”

— Pearl S. Buck

26. “The test of a civilization is in the way that it cares for its helpless members.”

— Pearl S. Buck

27. “A foreigner is a friend I have yet to meet.”

— Pearl S. Buck

28. “Once the ‘what’ is decided, the ‘how’ always follows. We must not make the ‘how’ an excuse for not facing and accepting the ‘what.’”

— Pearl S. Buck

29. “It is better to learn early of the inevitable depths, for then sorrow and death can take their proper place in life, and one is not afraid.”

— Pearl S. Buck

30. “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

31. “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

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

— Pearl S. Buck

33. “In this unbelievable universe in which we live, there are no absolutes. Even parallel lines, reaching into infinity, meet somewhere yonder.”

— Pearl S. Buck

34. “Hunger makes a thief of any man.”

— Pearl S. Buck

35. “Order is the shape upon which beauty depends.”

— Pearl S. Buck

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

— Pearl S. Buck

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

— Pearl S. Buck

38. “I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in human beings.”

— Pearl S. Buck

39. “Growth itself contains the germ of happiness.”

— Pearl S. Buck

40. “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

41. “Love alone could waken love.”

— Pearl S. Buck

42. “One faces the future with one’s past.”

— Pearl S. Buck

43. “Nothing and no one can destroy the Chinese people. They are relentless survivors.”

— Pearl S. Buck

44. “I am mentally bifocal.”

— Pearl S. Buck

45. “Love can never be a sin. It can be only a blessing. Even if you’re not loved in return – though I can’t imagine that – to love is a proof of life – indeed, it’s the only proof, for once you can’t love another human being, you’re not alive.”

— Pearl S. Buck

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

— Pearl S. Buck

47. “We learn as much from sorrow as from joy, as much from illness as from health, from handicap as from advantage and indeed perhaps more.”

— Pearl S. Buck

48. “I am comforted by life’s stability, by earth’s unchangeableness. What has seemed new and frightening assumes its place in the unfolding of knowledge. It is good to know our universe. What is new is only new to us.”

— Pearl S. Buck

49. “When men destroy their old gods they will find new ones to take their place.”

— Pearl S. Buck

50. “To repay evil with kindness is the proof of a good man; a superior man blames himself, a common man blames others.”

— Pearl S. Buck