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

"Let woman out of the home, let man into it, should be the aim of education. The home needs man, and the world outside needs woman."

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

"Race prejudice is not only a shadow over the colored it is a shadow over all of us, and the shadow is darkest over those who feel it least and allow its evil effects to go on."

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

"There was no need to hurry that future - yet the length of his own youth pressed upon him. Whatever he was to do next he wanted to begin now. But how to begin and on what?"

"Crowds moved wherever he went, across the bridge to Manhattan, in New York, wherever he went, life flowed and eddied, but he was not part of it."

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

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

"We send missionaries to China so the Chinese can get to heaven, but we won't let them into our country."

"This was his mind, a storehouse, a computer programmed to life, minute by minute, hour by hour, day and night."

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

"Some are kissing mothers and some are scolding mothers, but it is love just the same, and most mothers kiss and scold together."

"You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel, but you can make yourself do right in spite of your feelings."

"As for New York City, it is a place apart. There is not its match in any other country in the world."

"Out of the woman's great brown breast the milk gushed forth for the child, milk as white as snow, and when the child suckled at the one breast it flowed like a fountain from the other, ans she let it flow. There was more than enough for the child, greedy though he was, life enough for many children, and she let it flow out carelessly, conscious of her abundance. There was always more. Sometimes she lifted her breast and let it flow out upon the ground to save her clothing, and it sank into the earth and made a soft, dark, rich spot in the field. The child fat and good - natured and ate of the inexhaustible life his mother gave him."

"Nothing and no one can destroy the Chinese people. They are relentless survivors."

"He saw on the paper a picture of a man, white - skinned, who hung upon a crosspiece of wood. The man was without clothes except for a bit about his loins, and to all appearences he was dead, since his head drooped upon his shoulder and his eyes were closed above his bearded lips. Wang Lung looked at the pictured man in horror and with increasing interest."

"Self-expression must pass into communication for its fulfillment."

"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."

"You can judge your age by the amount of pain you feel when you come in contact with a new idea."

"Introversion at least if extreme is a sign of mental and spiritual immaturity."

"Now, five years is nothing in a man's life except when he is very young and very old... - Wang Lung"

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

"The truth is always exciting. Speak it, then. Life is dull without it."

"None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free."

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

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

"However impatient she might be in the day, however filled with little sudden angers, at night she was all tenderness."

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

"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."

"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."

"Love alone could waken love."

"It may be that religion is dead, and if it is, we had better know it and set ourselves to try to discover other sources of moral strength before it is too late."

"Life without idealism is empty indeed. We just hope or starve to death."

"The old deep sadness of life lay in the bottom of her heart and she knew it was there, but she would not allow herself to sink into it. Out of the dark and sullen bottom of a lake the lotus flowers bloomed upon its surface, and she would pluck the flowers."

"An intelligent, energetic, educated woman cannot be kept in four walls - even satin - lined, diamond - studded walls - without discovering sooner or later that they are still a prison"

"I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in the kindness of human beings. I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and angels."

"To those at the great house it means nothing, this handful of earth, but to me it means how much!' (Buck, 57)"

"The bitterest creature under heaven is the wife who discovers that her husband's bravery is only bravado, that his strength is only a uniform, that his power is but a gun in the hands of a fool."

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

"When men destroy their old gods they will find new ones to take their place."

"Just as he lived with them alive, he will live with them dead. Someday he will accept their death as part of his life. He will weep no more. He will carry them in his memory and his thoughts. His flesh and blood are part of them. So long as he is alive, they, too, will live in him. The big wave came, but it went away. The sun shines again, birds sing, and earth flowers."

"Once the 'what' is decided the 'how' always follows. We must not make the 'how' an excuse for not facing and accepting the 'what.'"

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

"Somehow I had learned from Thoreau, who doubtless learned it from Confucius, that if a man comes to do his own good for you, then must you flee that man and save yourself"

"This anxiety to keep his father from anger was wearisome to him."

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

"Inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that is where I renew my springs that never dry up."

"The basic discovery about any people is the discovery of the relationship between men and women."