Alan Paton Quotes

Everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be.

It is interesting to see all you fellows here. It will even be more interesting to see how many of you will be here a few months from now.

It will come sometime. Some beautiful morning she will just wake up and find it is Tomorrow. Not Today but Tomorrow. And then things will happen ... wonderful things.

Things will be far worse than they are now. And far better. I wait.

We are waiting for the next moment to contain what this moment does not.

And since we are people of expectation, we are so convinced that another world is coming that we start living as if it were already here.

We all have a suspicion and hope that we've just been part of something special, something that may eventually change our lives. That no one else knows this makes it seem like we are living with a secret that we would like to share, but can't, sort of like having a superpower that's not come online or being president elect. For the moment, our lives proceed as usual, but within a month, we think, everything will change. It's a frustrating, if exciting, disconnect.

Tomorrow will give us something to think about

For some time now she has had the conviction that life is about to change if only because it must. . . .

The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.

And maybe, just maybe, it will.

We won't know for a few years.

...and to-morrow looked in my face more steadily than I could look at it

I don’t know what’s ahead,” I say. “I don’t know nothing about nothing but whatever it is, it’s gotta be better than what’s behind. It’s gotta be.

The one fact about the future of which we can be certain is that it will be utterly fantastic.

The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time. The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.

[On common water.] Its substance reaches everywhere; it touches the past and prepares the future; it moves under the poles and wanders thinly in the heights of air. It can assume forms of exquisite perfection in a snowflake, or strip the living to a single shining bone cast up by the sea.

I know not what tomorrow will bring.

The possibility of transformation is the essence of hope.

Other things awaited. It was good to be young and to know it for once. So much unfolding to do.

Someday is someday, and maybe it will be or maybe it won't. This is a human thing, to worry about things that may or may not come to be. You can't eat meat until you've killed it.

All is waiting and all is work; all is change and all is permanence.

The future is always present, as a promise, a lure and a temptation.

I'm comfortable with time. Time will change.

Though I sit down now, the time will come whenyou will hear me.