“To eat bread without hope is still slowly to starve to death.”

“Life is stronger than death.”

“Many people lose the small joys in the hope for the big happiness.”

“And listening to all the things they would do if they had these things, Wang Lung heard only of how much they would eat and sleep, and of what dainties they would eat that they had never tasted,and how they would gamble in this great tea shop and in that, and what pretty women they would buy for their lust, and above all, how none would ever work again, even as they rich man behind the wall never worked.”

“The truth is always exciting. Speak it, then. Life is dull without it.”

“None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free.”

“None of us is so much better or wiser than any other than he can destroy a single creature without destroying something of himself.”