Pearl S. Buck

Self-expression must pass into communication for its fulfillment.

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.

Love dies only when growth stops.

If you start to revise before you've reached the end, you're likely to begin dawdling with the revisions and putting off the difficult task of writing.

All things are possible until they are proved impossible-and even the impossible may only be so as of now.

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

Praise out of season or tactlessly bestowed can freeze the heart as much as blame.

The young do not know enough to be prudent and therefore they attempt the impossible-and achieve it generation after generation.

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

We must have hope or starve to death.

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

Growth itself contains the germ of happiness.

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

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.

I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to earth.

It is better not to say "lend." There is only giving.

Some of the biggest failures I ever had were successes.

One faces the future with one's past.