Alan Paton Quotations

To give up the task of reforming society is to give up one's responsibility as a free man.

When a deep injury is done us, we never recover until we forgive.

Who knows for what we live, and struggle, and die? Wise men write many books, in words too hard to understand. But this, the purpose of our lives, the end of all our struggle, is beyond all human wisdom.

There is only one way in which one can endure man's inhumanity to man and that is to try, in one's own life, to exemplify man's humanity to man.

But the one thing that has power completely is love, because when a man loves, he seeks no power, and therefore he has power.

What broke in a man when he could bring himself to kill another?

Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply... For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much.

I envision someday a great, peaceful South Africa in which the world will take pride, a nation in which each of many different groups will be making its own creative contribution.

You ask yourself not if this or that is expedient, but if it is right.

If you wrote a novel in South Africa which didn't concern the central issues, it wouldn't be worth publishing.

When men are ruled by fear, they strive to prevent the very changes that will abate it.

But to punish and not to restore, that is the greatest of all offences.

For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much.

And money is not something to go mad about ... Money is for food and clothes and comfort, and a visit to the pictures. Money is to make happy the lives of children.

But sorrow is better than fear. For fear impoverishes always, while sorrow may enrich.

The ground is holy, being even as it came from the Creator. Keep it, guard it, care for it, for it keeps men, guards men, cares for men. Destroy it and man is destroyed.

For who can stop the heart from breaking?

What broke in a man when he could bring himself to kill another? What broke when he could bring himself to thrust down the knife into the warm flesh, to bring down the axe on the living head, to cleave down between the seeing eyes, to shoot the gun that would drive death into the beating heart?

I have never thought that a Christian would be free of suffering, umfundisi. For our Lord suffered. And I come to believe that he suffered, not to save us from suffering, but to teach us how to bear suffering. For he knew that there is no life without suffering.

It was not his habit to dwell on what could have been, but what could never be.

I have always found that actively loving saves one from a morbid preoccupation with the shortcomings of society.

One thing is about to be finished, but here is something that is only begun. And while I live it will continue

Ask yourself not if this or that is expedient, but if it is right.

And were your back as broad as heaven, and your purse full of gold, and did your compassion reach from here to hell itself, there is nothing you can do.

because life slips away, and because I need for the rest of my journey a star that will not play false to me, a compass that will not lie.

I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they are turned to loving, they will find that we are turned to hating.

The tragedy is not that things are broken. The tragedy is that things are not mended again.

It is not permissible for us to go on destroying the family life when we know that we are destroying it.

Happy the eyes that can close

Pain and suffering, they are a secret. Kindness and love, they are a secret. But I have learned that kindness and love can pay for pain and suffering.

There is not much talking now. A silence falls upon them all. This is no time to talk of hedges and fields, or the beauties of any country. Sadness and fear and hate, how they well up in the heart and mind, whenever one opens pages of these messengers of doom. Cry for the broken tribe, for the law and the custom that is gone. Aye, and cry aloud for the man who is dead, for the woman and children bereaved. Cry, the beloved country, these things are not yet at an end. The sun pours down on the earth, on the lovely land that man cannot enjoy. He knows only the fear of his heart.

There are voices crying what must be done, a hundred, a thousand voices. But what do they help if one seeks for counsel, for one cries this, and one cries that, and another cries something that is neither this nor that.

When I go up there, which is my intention, the Big Judge will say to me, Where are your wounds? and if I say I haven’t any, he will say, Was there nothing to fight for? I couldn’t face that question. (Ah, But Your Land Is Beautiful)

There is a man sleeping in the grass. And over him is gathering the greatest storm of all his days. Such lightening and thunder will come there has never been seen before, bringing death and destruction. People hurry home past him, to places safe from danger. And whether they do not see him there in the grass, or whether they fear to halt even a moment, but they do not wake him, they let him be.

There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills...

I am a weak and sinful man, but God put His hands on me, that is all.

Nothing is ever quiet, except for fools.

There is only one thing that has power completely, and that is love.

Forgive us all, for we all have trespasses.

The Afrikaner has nowhere to go, and thats why he would rather destroy himself than capitulate.

Something deep is touched here, something that is good and deep.

Life has not taught me to expect nothing, but she has taught me not to expect success to be the inevitable result of my endeavors. She taught me to seek sustenance from the endeavor itself, but to leave the result to God.

Nosecond Johannesburg isneededuponthe earth.One is enough.

All roads lead to Johannesburg.

It is my belief that the only power which can resist the power of fear is the power of love.

For it is the dawn that has come, as it has come for a thousand centuries, never failing.

St. Francis of Assisi taught me that there is a wound in the Creation and that the greatest use we could make of our lives was to ask to be made a healer of it.

One day in Johannesburg, and already the tribe was being rebuilt, the house and soul being restored.

Although nothing has come yet, something is here already.

Now God be thanked that the name of a hill is such music, that the name of a river can heal.

For mines are for men, not for money. And money is not something to go mad about, and throw your hat into the air for. Money is for food and clothes and comfort, and a visit to the pictures. Money is to make happy the lives of children. Money is for security, and for dreams, and for hopes, and for purposes. Money is for buying the fruits of the earth, of the land where you were born.

It is not permissible to add to one's possesions if these things can only be done at the cost of other men. Such development has only one true name, and that is exploitation.

Sorrow is better than fear. Fear is a journey,a terrible journey, but sorrow is at least an arrival. When the storm threatens, a man is afraid for his house. But when the house is destroyed, there is something to do. About a storm he can do nothing, but he can rebuild a house.

But when the dawn will come, of our emancipation, from the fear of bondage and the bondage of fear, why, that is a secret.

The Judge does not make the law. It is people that make the law. Therefore if a law is unjust, and if the Judge judges according to the law, that is justice, even if it is not just.

In the deserted harbour there is yet water that laps against the quays. In the dark and silent forest, there is a leaf that falls. Behind the polished panelling the white ant eats away the wood. Nothing is ever quiet, except for fools

Who knows for what we live, and struggle, and die?... Wise men write many books, in words too hard to understand. But this, the purpose of our lives, the end of all our struggle, is beyond all human wisdom.

We do not work for men. We work for the land and the people. We do not even work for money.

There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills. These hills are grass-covered and rolling, and they are lovely beyond any singing of it....

Sorrow is better than fear. Fear is a journey, a terrible journey. But, sorrow is at least an arriving.

The truth is, our civilization is not Christian; it is a tragic compound of great ideal and fearful practice, of loving charity and fearful clutching of possessions.

Let me not be afraid to defend the weak because of the anger of the strong, nor afraid to defend the poor because of the anger of the rich.

The only way in which one can make endurable man's inhumanity to man, and man's destruction of his own environment, is to exemplify in your own lives man's humanity to man and man's reverence for the place in which he lives.

But perhaps when you were too obedient, and did not do openly what others did, and were quiet in church and hard-working at school, then some unknown rebellion brewed in you, doing harm to you, though how I do not understand.

Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that's the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing. Nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him if he gives too much.

It is not "forgive and forget" as if nothing wrong had ever happened, but "forgive and go forward," building on the mistakes of the past and the energy generated by reconciliation to create a new future.

who knows what life is, for life is a secret

This year the crop tends towards the personal, the particular and the recreational. This, the judges believe, points to a society considerably more at ease with itself...

The Afrikaner has nowhere to go, and that's why he would rather destroy himself than capitulate.

I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they (the whites of South Africa) have turned to loving, they will find we (the blacks) are turned to hating.