Alan Paton Quotes

In today's Republican Party, there's a term for people who hate charity and love killing: 'Christian.'

It is curious that Christianity, which is idealism, is sturdily defended by the brokers, and steadily attacked by the idealists.

I felt it was my duty to praise all of God's works with fervent enthusiasm. At the same time I killed flies in my house in a spirit of hatred, exasperation and contempt. My praise to God for all his works was dishonest, the act of killing the fly was honest.

No man is a Christian who cheats his fellows, perverts the truth, or speaks of a "clean bomb" yet he will be the first to make public his faith in God.

The world is equally shocked at hearing Christianity criticized and seeing it practiced.

Christianity had two faces which bewildered me - two pictures which didn't fit.

Surely the principles of Christianity lead to action as well as meditation.

Faith without works is dead.

It is a contradiction to be a sanctified man, or a true christian, and not humble.

If God came to save the world, why are so many of His professed followers intent on damning it?

We modern Christians are long on talk and short on conduct.

Lukewarm people give money to charity and to the church...so long as it doesn't impinge on their standard of living. Lukewarm people tend to choose what is popular over what is right. Lukewarm people don't really want to be saved from their sin; they want to be saved from the penalty of their sin. Lukewarm people rarely share their faith with their neighbors, coworkers, or friends. Lukewarm people are thankful for their luxuries and comforts, and rarely consider trying to give as much as possible to the poor.

How can we bless at one moment and curse at another?

Christians don't tell lies they just go to church and sing them.

Those [Christians] had left to love on earth were then: brothers and sisters in hatred, whom they called then: brothers and sisters in love.

I'm a pretty solid Christian. But even as an altar boy, I was always asking the bigger questions--you know: if God is, in fact, good, what is all this death I see? And if God is gentle, what is all this suffering I see? I've found some of the answers in Eastern religion. It explained my Christianity to me. Good and evil are the same thing. You can't have one without the other. It's the balance, it's the temperance of things.

It was no true prayer to beg forgiveness while choosing to sin.

Most Christians are educated way beyond the level of their obedience already! We don’t need to know more, we need to do more.

Christ could not create a codified 'Christian ethics'; such a thing would be a contradiction in terms.

A man cannot serve God and Mammon, nor be "temperate and furious" at the same time.

Behind the cross is the devil.

We have to admit that there is an immeasurable distance between all that we read in the Bible and the practice of the Church and of Christians.

Instead of making Christianity a vehicle of truth, you make truth only a horse for Christianity.

Every stoic was a stoic; but in Christendom where is the Christian?

Though there is antipathy in the human heart to the gospel of Christ, yet when Christians make their good work shine, all admire them. It is when great disparity exists between profession and practice that we secure the scorn of mankind.