The Good Earth Quotes

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

- Wang Lung”
― Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth

“The rich are always afraid.”
― Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth

“I am always glad when any of my books can be put into an inexpensive edition, because I like to think that any people who might wish to read them can do so. Surely books ought to be within reach of everybody.”
― Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth

“It is the end of a family- when they begin to sell their land. Out of the land we came and into we must go - and if you will hold your land you can live- no one can rob you of land.”
― Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth

“Hunger makes thief of any man.”
― Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth

“And roots, if they are to bear fruits, must be kept well in the soil of the land.”
― Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth

“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.”
― Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth

“Now it has been said from ancient times that all women who weep may be divided into three sorts. There are those who lift up their voices and their tears flow and this may be called crying; there are those who utter loud lamentations but whose tears do not flow and this may be called howling; there are those whose tears flow but who utter no sound and this may be called weeping. Of all those women who followed Wang Lung in his coffin, his wives and his sons’ wives and his maid servants and his slaves and his hired mourners, there was only one who wept and it was Pear Blossom.”
― Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth

“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 ploughed and turned and spent himself upon. He took his life from the earth; drop by 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, The Good Earth

“If I have a handful of silver it is because I work and my wife works, and we do not, as some do, sit idling over a gambling table or gossiping on doorsteps never swept, letting the fields grow to weeds and our children go half-fed!" (Buck, 65)”
― Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth

“But hers was a strange heart, sad in its very nature, and she could never weep and ease it as other women do, for her tears never brought her comfort.”
― Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth

“Well, and they must all starve if the plants starve." 'It was true that all their lives depended upon the earth' (Buck, 71).”
― Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth

“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.”
― Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth

“Our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members.”
― Pearl Buck, The Good Earth

“Well I know I am ugly and cannot be loved—”
― Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth

“Then Wang Lung turned to the woman and looked at her for the first time. She had a square, honest face, a short, broad nose with large black nostrils, and her mouth was wide as a gash in her face. Her eyes were small and of a dull black in color, and were filled with some sadness that was not clearly expressed. It was a face that seemed habitually silent and unspeaking, as though it could not speak if it would. She bore patiently Wang Lung’s look, without embarrassment or response, simply waiting until he had seen her. He saw that it was true there was not beauty of any kind in her face—a brown, common, patient face. But there were no pock-marks on her dark skin, nor was her lip split. In her ears he saw his rings hanging, the gold-washed rings he had bought, and on her hands were the rings he had given her. He turned away with secret exultation. Well, he had his woman!”
― Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth

“He lived in the rich city as alien as a rat in a rich man's house that is fed on scraps thrown away, and hides here and there and is never a part of the real life of the house.”
― Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth

“It was Wang Lung's marriage day.”
― Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth

“And out of his heaviness there stood out strangely but one clear thought and it was a pain to him, and it was this, that he wished he had not taken the two pearls from O-lan that day when she was washing his clothes at the pool, and he would never bear to see Lotus put them in her ears again.”
― Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth

“Well, and you may have lived in the courts of the Old Lord, and you were accounted beautiful, but I have been a man's wife and I have borne him sons, and you are still a slave.”
― Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth

“Then the good land did again its healing work and the sun shone on him and healed him and the warm winds of summer wrapped him about with peace.”
― Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth

“The first peaches of spring - the first peaches! Buy, eat, purge your bowels of the poisons of winter!”
― Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth

“To those at the great house it means nothing, this handful of earth, but to me it means how much!" (Buck, 57)”
― Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth

“and his voice came from him in a whisper,”
― Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth

“When I return to that house it will be with my son in my arms. I shall have a red coat on him and red-flowered trousers and on his head a hat with a small gilded Buddha sewn on the front and on his feet tiger-faced shoes. And I will wear new shoes and a new coat of black sateen and I will go into the kitchen where I spent my days and I will go into the great hall where the Old One sits with her opium, and I will show myself and my son to all of them.”
― Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth

“And listening to all the things they would do if they had these things, Wang Lung heard only of how much they would eat and sleep, and of what dainties they would eat that they had never tasted,and how they would gamble in this great tea shop and in that, and what pretty women they would buy for their lust, and above all, how none would ever work again, even as they rich man behind the wall never worked.”
― Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth

“He lived in the rich city as alien as a rat in a rich man’s house that is fed on scraps thrown away, and hides here and there and is never a part of the real life of the house.”
― Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth

“We must have this rule, for there are those whose hearts are so hard that they will come and buy this rice that is given for the poor--for a penny will not feed any man like this--and they will carry the rice home to feed to their pigs for slop. And the rice is for men and not for pigs" (Buck, 105).”
― Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth

“And from that time on the boys were no longer called Elder and Younger, but they were given school names by the old teacher, and this old man, after inquiring into the occupation of their father, erected two names for the sons; for the elder, Nung En, and for the second Nung Wen, and the first word of each name signified one whose wealth is from the earth.”
― Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth

“When the rich are too rich there are ways, and when the poor are too poor there are ways. Last winter we sold two girls and endured, and this winter, if this one my woman bears is a girl, we will sell again. One slave I have kept—the first. The others it is better to sell than to kill, although there are those who prefer to kill them before they draw breath. This is one of the ways when the poor are too poor. When the rich are too rich there is a way, and if I am not mistaken, that way will come soon.”
― Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth