destructiveness comes only when life isn't lived. People who can live their lives don't destroy themselves.

The mind that doggedly insists on prejudice often has not intelligence enough to change.

It certainly must have been a relief for women of the country to realize that one could be a woman and a lady and yet be thoroughly political.

Perhaps one has to be very old before one learns to be amused rather than shocked.

He saw on the paper a picture of a man, white-skinned, who hung upon a crosspiece of wood. The man was without clothes except for a bit about his loins, and to all appearences he was dead, since his head drooped upon his shoulder and his eyes were closed above his bearded lips. Wang Lung looked at the pictured man in horror and with increasing interest.

Never, if you can possibly help it, write a novel. It is, in the first place, a thoroughly unsocial act. It makes one obnoxious to one's family and to one's friends. One sits about for many weeks, months, even years, in the worst cases, in a state of stupefaction.

Integrity is honesty carried through the fibres of the being and the whole mind, into thought as well as action so that the person is complete in honesty. That kind of integrity I put above all else as an essential to leadership.