Alan Paton Quotes & Sayings

#1. Something within me is waking from long sleep, and I want to live and move again. Some zest is returning to me, some immense gratefulness for those who love me, some strong wish to love them also. I am full of thanks for life. I have not told myself to be thankful. I am just so.

Alan Paton

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

Alan Paton

#3. 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

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

Alan Paton

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

Alan Paton

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

Alan Paton

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

Alan Paton

#8. Indeed, there is something in this valley, some spirit and some life, and much to talk about in the huts. Although nothing has come yet, something is here already.

Alan Paton

#9. Deep down the fear of a man who lives in a world not made for him, whose own world is slipping away, dying, being destroyed, beyond any recall.

Alan Paton

#10. 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

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

Alan Paton

#12. Happy the eyes that can close

Alan Paton

#13. 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

#14. Nothing is every quiet, except for fools.

Alan Paton

#15. 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

#16. The humble man reached in his pocket for his sacred book, and began to read. It was this world alone that was certain.

Alan Paton

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

Alan Paton

#18. He went out of the door, and she watched him through the little window, walking slowly to the door of the church. Then she sat down at his table, and put her head on it, and was silent, with the patient suffering of black women, with the suffering of oxen, with the suffering of any that are mute.

Alan Paton

#19. 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.

Alan Paton

#20. No second Johannesburg is needed upon the earth. One is enough.

Alan Paton

#21. 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.

Alan Paton

#22. For who can stop the heart from breaking?

Alan Paton

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

Alan Paton

#24. Indeed, mother, you are always our helper."
"For what else are we born?

Alan Paton

#25. His son had gone astray in the great city, where so many others had gone astray before him, and where many others would go astray after him, until there was found some great secret that as yet no man had discovered.

Alan Paton

#26. Meneer, said the captain, if man takes unto himself God's right to punish, then he must also take upon himself God's promise to restore.

Alan Paton

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

Alan Paton

#28. 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

#29. God forgives us ... who am I not to forgive?

Alan Paton

#30. 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

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

Alan Paton

#32. 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.

Alan Paton

#33. He is a missionary and believes in God, intensely I mean, but it takes all kinds to make a world.

Alan Paton

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

Alan Paton

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

Alan Paton

#36. 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.

Alan Paton

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

Alan Paton

#38. I do this not because I am courageous and honest, but because it is the only way to end the conflict of my deepest soul.

Alan Paton

#39. Therefore let us sell our labour for what it is worth. And if an industry cannot buy our labour, let that industry die. But let us not sell our labour cheap to keep an industry alive.

Alan Paton

#40. It is the duty of a judge to do justice, but it is only the people who can be just

Alan Paton

#41. He pondered long over this, for might not another man, returning to another valley, have found none of these things? Why was it given to one man to have his pain transmuted into gladness? Why was it given to one man to have such an awareness of God?

Alan Paton

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

Alan Paton

#43. 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

#44. 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

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

Alan Paton

#46. Forgive us all, for we all have trespasses.

Alan Paton

#47. The judge does not make the law. It is the people that make the law. It is the duty of a judge to do justice, but it is only the people that can be just

Alan Paton

#48. Something in the humble voice must have touched Msimangu, for he said, I am not kind. I am a selfish and sinful man, but God put his hands on me, that is all.

Alan Paton

#49. 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

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

Alan Paton

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

Alan Paton

#52. 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.

Alan Paton

#53. Stand unshod upon it, for 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

#54. 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.

Alan Paton

#55. It was to the small serious boy that he turned for his enjoyment. He had bought the child some cheap wooden blocks, and with these the little one played endlessly and intently, with a purpose obscure to the adult mind, but completely absorbing.

Alan Paton

#56. 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

#57. He was reluctant to open it, for once such a thing is opened, it cannot be shut again.

Alan Paton

#58. 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.

Alan Paton

#59. 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.

Alan Paton

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

Alan Paton

#61. 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.

Alan Paton

#62. 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 ...

Alan Paton

#63. There is no point in imagining that if one had been there, one could have prevented a thing that had happened only because it had not been prevented

Alan Paton

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

Alan Paton

#65. Aye, but the hand that had murdered had once pressed the mother's breast into the thirsting mouth, had stolen into the father's hand when they went out into the dark. Aye, but the murderer afraid of death had once been a child afraid of the night.

Alan Paton

#66. In a land of fear ... incorruptibility is like a lamp set upon a stand, giving light to all in the house.

Alan Paton

#67. 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.

Alan Paton

#68. 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.

Alan Paton