Now, five years is nothing in a man's life except when he is very young and very old... - Wang Lung
Pearl S. BuckRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
True freedom comes from within and involves letting go of attachments.
This quote by Pearl S. Buck emphasizes that real freedom is not just about physical absence but achieving a mental and emotional liberation from past attachments. By holding on to constant thoughts of someone, we inhibit our ability to truly embrace life and experience our own freedom; thus, letting go and allowing life to flow is essential for personal growth and liberation.
Themes
FreedomLetting GoSelf-DiscoveryInner PeaceLife
In practice
Example use cases
During a motivational seminar, to inspire the audience about the importance of self-acceptance.
More from Pearl S. Buck
All quotes →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
God is not in the vastness of greatness. He is hid in the vastness of smallness . He is not in the general. He is in the particular.
Pearl S. BuckRead
Similar quotes
When trying to remember my share in the glow of the eternal present, in the smile of God, I return to my childhood, too, for that is where the most significant discoveries turn up.
Hermann HesseRead
Republics, one after another . . . have perished from a want of intelligence and virtue in the masses of the people. . . .
Horace MannRead
Men become wise just as they become rich, more by what they save than by what they receive.
Wilbur WrightRead
We must develop the capacity to see men not as they are at present but as they may become.
Thomas S. MonsonRead
Sad will be the day for every man when he becomes absolutely contented with the life that he is living, with the thoughts that he is thinking, with the deeds that he is doing, when there is not forever beating at the doors of his soul some great desire to do something larger, which he knows that he was meant and made to do because he is the child of God.
Phillips BrooksRead
Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.
Dr. SeussRead