Alan Paton Quotes
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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.
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There is only one thing that has power completely, and that is love.
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I am a weak and sinful man, but God put His hands on me, that is all.
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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?
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It is not permissible for us to go on destroying the family life when we know that we are destroying it.
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One day in Johannesburg, and already the tribe was being rebuilt, the house and soul being restored.
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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.
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Now God be thanked that the name of a hill is such music, that the name of a river can heal.
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There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills...
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Nothing is ever quiet, except for fools.
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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.
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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)
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Ask yourself not if this or that is expedient, but if it is right.
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For who can stop the heart from breaking?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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...
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If you wrote a novel in South Africa which didn't concern the central issues, it wouldn't be worth publishing.
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When men are ruled by fear, they strive to prevent the very changes that will abate it.
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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.
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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.
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But sorrow is better than fear. For fear impoverishes always, while sorrow may enrich.
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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.