Now, five years is nothing in a man's life except when he is very young and very old... - Wang Lung
Pearl S. BuckRead
We send missionaries to China so the Chinese can get to heaven, but we won't let them into our country.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the hypocrisy of wanting to save others spiritually while denying them basic rights and access.
Pearl S. Buck's quote critiques the double standards held by societies that profess to care for others' spiritual well-being yet simultaneously restrict their physical presence and rights. It illustrates a disconnect between altruistic intentions and practical actions, emphasizing the importance of consistency in one's values and principles, particularly in matters of compassion and inclusion.
Themes
HypocrisyInclusionHuman RightsSpiritualityCompassion
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in discussions about immigration policies and humanitarian efforts in a societal context.
More from Pearl S. Buck
All quotes βYou 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.
Pearl S. BuckRead
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.
Pearl S. BuckRead
To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.
Pearl S. BuckRead
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.
Pearl S. BuckRead
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.
Pearl S. BuckRead
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