Alan Paton Quotes

31 Sourced Quotes

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.

Alan Paton
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.

Alan Paton
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?

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

Alan Paton
For it is the dawn that has come, as it has come for a thousand centuries, never failing. But when that dawn will come, of our emancipation, from the fear of bondage and the bondage of fear, why, that is a secret.

Alan Paton
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.

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

Alan Paton
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.

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

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

Alan Paton
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.

Alan Paton
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.

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

Alan Paton
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

Alan Paton
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.

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

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

Alan Paton
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.

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

Alan Paton
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.

Alan Paton
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.

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

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

Alan Paton
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.

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

Alan Paton
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.

Alan Paton
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)

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

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

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

Alan Paton