ALAN PATON

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

You ask yourself not if this or that is expedient, but if it is right.

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

What broke in a man when he could bring himself to kill another?

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.

But the one thing that has power completely is love, because when a man loves, he seeks no power, and therefore he has power.

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

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

Nothing is ever quiet, except for fools.

For who can stop the heart from breaking?

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.