Kinfolk Quotes

“I should like to penetrate your mind with my own,” he said. “I should like to pierce the mysteries of your soul.”
― Pearl S. Buck, Kinfolk: A Novel of China

“Ah well, Liang was her husband and she would never have another. Even had she been young and beautiful she would not have run from man to man as women did nowadays. But she was neither young nor beautiful and she was grateful for Liang. It was honorable to be his wife, and if he had a peevish temper at home, he might have been worse. He had never beaten her, and she had learned, after all these years, how to torture him.”
― Pearl S. Buck, Kinfolk

“A nation that did not organize its generations in proper relationships was doomed to disintegration.”
― Pearl S. Buck, Kinfolk

“Old One," the tenant said apologetically. "It is none of my business and I ought to die, but after all they are the children of your elder brother's son who after all is the first in the next generation after you.”
― Pearl S. Buck, Kinfolk

“Peter groaned loudly. "Sonia Pan! She's ugly."
Mris. Liang would not yield. "Ugly girls can be fixed now. It is not like before. And she is very good. She does not waste money."
"It would be no use for her to waste money on herself," Louise murmured.”
― Pearl S. Buck, Kinfolk

“This pandering to the rich disgusts me,' James said. 'Every day I find workmen putting up walls about a section of the ward to make a new private room for a general or an official.'
'It is not pandering,' Dr. Peng said. Virtue shone in his narrow brilliantly black eyes. 'It is necessity, Charity patients do not pay. Generals and officials and millionaires pay very well. I daresay you would complain Dr. Liang, if your salary were curtailed--an excellent salary it is, too ...'
James glared into the handsome smooth face. Then he turned and went out, slamming the door slightly.”
― Pearl S. Buck, Kinfolk

“To step off the island was to be drowned in the sea.”
― Pearl S. Buck, Kinfolk

“What is the end of a story? There is no end. Life folds into life, and the stream flows on.”
― Pearl S. Buck, Kinfolk

“He was beginning to understand that sickness and health, that ignorance and learning, poverty and comfort, war and peace, sorrow and joy were all fruits of human confusion or of human wisdom. Here in this one small village set in a spreading countryside was the whole world. What was true here was true anywhere,”
― Pearl S. Buck, Kinfolk

“Some women cannot understand that marriage is not everything and that work comes first.”
― Pearl S. Buck, Kinfolk

“It takes a certain kind of person to live in
China now', Chen mused.
'What kind of person?' Mary asked.
'Someone who can see true meanings; someone who does not only want the world better but also believes it can be made better, and gets angry because it is not done. ; someone who is not willing to hide himself in one of the few good places left in the world--someone who is tough!”
― Pearl S. Buck, Kinfolk

“People, he reflected, must live at these different levels. Some must work with the hands, some with the mind. The peasants should not be lifted from their places as workers with the hands, or the higher ones would starve. ... Such persons should not be taught falsely that they could or should do other work.”
― Pearl S. Buck, Kinfolk

“Sun above and earth beneath, both together make man's bread.”
― Pearl S. Buck, Kinfolk

“Any patient might be grateful for those hands working in his vitals with such speed and accuracy. But once the task was over whether the patient lived or died was none of Kang's concern. He seldom inquired. He often refused altogether to operate on an old woman, on a poor man or on a frightened child. Crying children especially annoyed him,”
― Pearl S. Buck, Kinfolk

“There were many starving people and the policemen treated them as criminals. Perhaps they were. There was no line between starvation and crime. He felt himself torn in the division of reality. The world, the whole world, was divided into two parts, the island of the rich and the ocean of the poor.”
― Pearl S. Buck, Kinfolk