Quotes from Alan Paton

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.

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

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

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

But there is only one thing that has power completely, and this is love. Because when a man loves, he seeks no power, and therefore he has power.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There is a hard law. When an injury is done to us, we never recover until we forgive.

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.

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.

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.

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

Happy the eyes that can close

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.

For who can stop the heart from breaking?

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.

I see only one hope for our country, and that is when white men and black men, desiring neither power nor money, but desiring only the good for their country, come together to work for it. I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they are turned to loving, they will find we are turned to hating.

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

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)

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