Now, five years is nothing in a man's life except when he is very young and very old... - Wang Lung
Pearl S. BuckRead
If there is no other life, then this one has been enough to make it worth being born myself...a human being.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the value of human existence and the meaningfulness of life itself, even in the absence of an afterlife.
Pearl S. Buck's quote highlights the idea that the current life we live holds significant worth, and the experiences we gather as human beings make our existence valuable. It suggests that regardless of what may lie beyond this life, the journey and experiences we face in the here and now are sufficient to justify our existence, encouraging appreciation for life as it is.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a graduation speech to inspire students about the importance of their existence.
Now, five years is nothing in a man's life except when he is very young and very old... - Wang Lung
You are free when you gain back yourself,β Madame Wu said. βYou 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.
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.
To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.
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.
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.
All men were made brothers. The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it. You might as well expect the rivers to run backward as that any man who was born free should be content when penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases.
This is sweet to see your foe, perish and pay to justice all he owes.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, has a more direct bearing on the moral choices made by individuals or the purposes pursued by society than belief or disbelief in God.
We would be a lot safer if the Government would take its money out of science and put it into astrology and the reading of palms. I used to think that science would save us, and science certainly tried. But we can't stand any more tremendous explosions, either for or against democracy.
Those who travel to mountain-tops are half in love with themselves, and half in love with oblivion.
average human βlooks without seeing, listens without hearing, touches without feeling, eats without tasting, moves without physical awareness, inhales without awareness of odour or fragrance, and talks without thinking.
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