Now, five years is nothing in a man's life except when he is very young and very old... - Wang Lung
Pearl S. BuckRead
French is the most beautiful,” he said, “and Italian is the most poetic, and Russian the most powerful, German the most solid. But more business is done in English than in any other.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Different languages have unique qualities that make them beautiful, poetic, powerful, or solid, but English is the most widely used for business.
This quote by Pearl S. Buck highlights the distinctive characteristics of various languages, such as the beauty of French, the poetry of Italian, the power of Russian, and the solidity of German. However, it underlines the practical aspect that, despite these aesthetic qualities, English holds a dominant position in the global business landscape, emphasizing its significance in communication and commerce.
Themes
LanguageEnglishBusinessCommunicationCulture
In practice
Example use cases
In a business meeting focused on global partnerships, this quote can be used to emphasize the significance of English in the corporate world.
More from Pearl S. Buck
All quotes →You are free when you gain back yourself,” Madame Wu said. “You can be as free within these walls as you could be in the whole world. And how could you be free if, however far you wander, you still carry inside yourself the constant thought of him? See where you belong in the stream of life. Let it flow through you, cool and strong. Do not dam it with your two hands, lest he break the dam and so escape you. Let him go free, and you will be free.
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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.
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To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.
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The lack of emotional security of our American young people is due, I believe, to their isolation from the larger family unit. No two people - no mere father and mother - as I have often said, are enough to provide emotional security for a child. He needs to feel himself one in a world of kinfolk, persons of variety in age and temperament, and yet allied to himself by an indissoluble bond which he cannot break if he could, for nature has welded him into it before he was born.
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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.
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