A House Divided Quotes

“For this Mary’s words were not surcharged with oversubtle meaning. No, she spoke them out swiftly and with sharp clearness and each word had its own weight and meaning and no more, good tools of her mind, but not messengers of vague suggestion.”
― Pearl S. Buck, A House Divided

“Crime begins in poverty; poverty in insufficiency of food; insufficiency in neglect of tilling of the soil. Without such tilling, man has no tie to bind him to the soil. Without such a tie he readily leaves his birthplace and his home. Then he is like the birds of the air or the beasts of the field. Neither battlemented cities nor deep moats, nor harsh laws, nor cruel punishments, can subdue this roving spirit that is strong within him.”
― Pearl S. Buck, A House Divided

“You ought to hate him, Yuan! Have you not heard what white men have done to our country, and how they hold us hard as any prisoners with their cruel, unjust treaties?”
― Pearl S. Buck, A House Divided

“And will you understand me when I say I would fight to keep you free from such beliefs because for you they would be false, and at the same time I would fight to keep my mother in those same beliefs because for her they are true and necessary? She would be lost without them, for by them she has lived and by them she must
die. But you and l—we must have our own beliefs
to live and die in”
― Pearl S. Buck, A House Divided

“Loneliness is only sweet to a man if it rids him of presences irksome and unwanted, and it is no longer sweet when the beloved presences are discovered.”
― Pearl S. Buck, A House Divided

“Yuan could not for his life say, “This man is rich and evil, and this man is poor and good,” and so he was spoiled for any cause-making, however great the cause.”
― Pearl S. Buck, A House Divided

“and comforted by his greater wisdom he fell asleep again deeply in the darkness and the stillness.”
― Pearl S. Buck, A House Divided

“and they looked with coming hatred and with fear upon this young man, saying in their hearts they knew he lied, because they could not believe there was in the whole world a man who would choose an earthen house when he might have a great one.”
― Pearl S. Buck, A House Divided