Wandering is never waste, dear boy,' he said. 'While you wander you will find much to wonder about, and wonder is the first step to creation.

— Pearl S. Buck

Wang Lung sat smoking, thinking of the silver as it had lain upon the table. It had come out of the earth, this silver, out of the earth that he plowed and turned and spent himself upon. He took his life from the earth; drop by his sweat he wrung food from it and from the food, silver. Each time before this that he had taken the silver out to give to anyone, it had been like taking a piece of his life and giving it to someone carelessly. But not for the first time, such giving was not pain. He saw, not the silver in the alien hand of a merchant in the town; he saw the silver transmuted into something worth even more than life itself - clothes upon the body of his son.

— Pearl S. Buck

We must have hope or starve to death.

— Pearl S. Buck

We must learn to live with danger," he now said to King. "Do you mean the ocean and the volcano cannot hurt us if we are not afraid?" King asked. "No," his father replied. "I did not say that. Ocean is there and volcano is there. It is true that on any day ocean may rise into storm and volcano may burst into flame. We must accept this fact, but without fear. We must say, 'Someday I shall die, and does it matter whether it is by ocean or volcano, or whether I grow old and weak?' " "I don't want to think about such things," King said. "It is right for you not to think about them," his father said. "Then do not be afraid. When you are afraid, you are thinking about them all the time. Enjoy life and do not fear death - that is the way of a good Japanese.

— Pearl S. Buck

We need to restore the full meaning of that old word duty. It is the other side of rights.

— Pearl S. Buck

We should so provide for old age that it may have no urgent wants of this world to absorb it from meditation on the next. It is awful to see the lean hands of dotage making a coffer of the grave.

— Pearl S. Buck

Whatever came to him was good. It was life. It was knowledge.

— Pearl S. Buck

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

— Pearl S. Buck

When hope is taken away from the people moral degeneration follows swiftly after.

— Pearl S. Buck

When we know what we want to prove we go out and find our facts. They are always there.

— Pearl S. Buck