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 right,” he had said. “Love is not the word. No one can love his neighbor. Say, rather, ‘Know thy neighbor as thyself.” That is, comprehend his hardships and understand his position, deal with his faults as gently as with your own. Do not judge him where you do not judge yourself. Madame, this is the meaning of the word love.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes understanding and compassion towards others as the true essence of love.
In this quote, Pearl S. Buck suggests that love is more than just an emotional attachment; it involves a deep understanding and empathy towards others. By encouraging individuals to comprehend the struggles of their neighbors and to be gentle with their faults, the quote advocates for a love that is rooted in self-awareness and compassion, urging us to avoid judgment and instead embrace mutual respect and understanding.
Themes
LoveUnderstandingCompassionEmpathyNeighbor
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used during a community service meeting to inspire volunteers to understand the needs of those they are helping.
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
Similar quotes
If you love, you will suffer, and if you do not love, you do not know the meaning of a Christian life.
Agatha ChristieRead
I don't particularly believe all love is doomed. But I guess, one is usually kinda suffering from some aborted love affair or association, rather than being at the peak of one. I think it's fairly obvious that a lot more suffering goes on in the name of love than the little happiness you can squeeze out of it.
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How could it be that you could love someone so much and keep it secret from yourself as you woke daily so far from home?
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The wise want love; and those who love want wisdom.
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I can elect something I love and absorb myself in it.
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Where I say that He abideth sorrowfully and moaning, it meaneth all the true feeling that we have in our self, in contrition and compassion, and all sorrowing and moaning that we are not oned with our Lord. And all such that is speedful, it is Christ in us. And though some of us feel it seldom, it passeth never from Christ till what time He hath brought us out of all our woe. For love suffereth never to be without pity.
Julian Of NorwichRead