Alan Paton
16 quotes
Biography
Alan Stewart Paton was a South African writer and anti-apartheid activist. His works include the novels Cry, the Beloved Country (1948), Too Late the Phalarope (1953), and the short story The Waste Land.
"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."
"The white man has broken the tribe. And it is my belief—and again I ask your pardon—that it cannot be mended again. But the house that is broken, and the man that falls apart when the house is broken, these are the tragic things. That is why children break the law, and old white people are robbed and beaten."
"I see only one hope for our country, and that is when white men and black men . . . desiring only the good of 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."
"This is no time to talk of hedges and fields, or the beauties of any country. . . . 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 truth is that our civilization is not Christian; it is a tragic compound of great ideal and fearful practice, of high assurance and desperate anxiety, of loving charity and fearful clutching of possessions. Allow me a minute. . . ."
"And now for all the people of Africa, the beloved country. Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika, God save Africa. But he would not see that salvation. It lay afar off, because men were afraid of it. Because, to tell the truth, they were afraid of him, and his wife, and Msimangu, and the young demonstrator. And what was there evil in their desires, in their hunger? That man should walk upright in the land where they were born, and be free to use the fruits of the earth, what was there evil in it? . . . They were afraid because they were so few. And such fear could not be cast out, but by love."
"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."
"I have always found that actively lovingsaves one from a morbid preoccupationwith the shortcomings of society."
"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."
"There is a hard law. When an injury is done to us, we never recover until we forgive."
"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."
"Life 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."
"When a deep injury is done us, we never recover until we forgive."
"Life 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."
"When men are ruled by fear they strive to prevent the very changes that will abate it."
"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."