Now, five years is nothing in a man's life except when he is very young and very old... - Wang Lung
Pearl S. BuckRead
Write a novel if you must, but think of money as an unlikely accident. Get your reward out of writing it, and try to be content with that.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Focus on the joy of writing rather than the pursuit of financial gain.
This quote by Pearl S. Buck emphasizes the intrinsic value of writing as an artistic endeavor, suggesting that writers should prioritize their passion and the satisfaction derived from creating stories over the potential financial rewards. By framing monetary success as an 'unlikely accident', Buck encourages writers to find fulfillment in the act of writing itself, reinforcing the idea that true success lies in personal contentment rather than external validation.
Themes
WritingSuccessContentmentArtReward
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech at a writers' conference, you could emphasize the importance of enjoying the writing process, referencing Buck's quote.
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.
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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