Alan Paton Quotes

For what can men do when so many have grown lawless? Who can enjoy the lovely land, who can enjoy the seventy years, and the sun that pours down on the earth, when there is fear in the heart? Who can walk quietly in the shadow of the jacarandas, when their beauty is grown to danger? Who can lie peacefully abed, while the darkness holds some secret? What lovers can lie sweetly under the stars, when menace grows with the measure of their seclusion?

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

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.

....for the black moods and the angers and the cold withdrawals that robbed her of the simple joys of her quiet and humble life.

...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.

But to punish and not to restore, that is the greatest of all offences.

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.

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.

...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.

Sorrow is better than fear. Fear is a journey,a terrible journey, but sorrow is at least an arrival. When the storm threatens, a man is afraid for his house. But when the house is destroyed, there is something to do. About a storm he can do nothing, but he can rebuild a house.

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

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.

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. . . .

For a man can be happy and free, and be cast down by a word. And a woman can be in the depths of misery, and be lifted up by an asking for forgiveness. So one goes from joy to dejection, and hurt to exaltation, and certainty to doubt, as when with some summer storm the whole world is dark and sombre, till suddenly the sun breaks through, almost at its setting, and bathes tree and grass and hill in green and yellow light, the link of which, as the English say, was never seen on land or sea.

...if man takes unto himself God's right to punish, then he must also take upon himself God's promise to restore.