About Alan Paton: Alan Stewart Paton was a South African author and anti-apartheid activist.
— This world is full of trouble, umfundisi. — Who knows it better? — Yet you believe? Kumalo looked at him under the light of the lamp. I believe, he said, but I have learned that it is a secret. Pain and suffering, they are a secret. Kindness ...
They were your friends?" "Yes, they were my friends." "And they will leave you to suffer alone?" "Now I see it." "And until this, were they friends you could trust?" "I could trust them." "I see what you mean. You mean they were the kind of friends t...
In the meantime the strike is over, with a remarkably low loss of life. All is quiet, they report, all is quiet. In the deserted harbour there is yet water that laps against the quays. In the dark and silent forest there is a leaf that falls. Behind ...
There's a hard law, mejuffrou, that when a deep injury is done to us, we never recover until we forgive.
But to punish and not to restore, that is the greatest of all offences.
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.
Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that's the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld...
All roads lead to Johannesburg. If you are white or if you are black they lead to Johannesburg. If the crops fail, there is work in Johannesburg. If there are taxes to be paid, there is work in Johannesburg. If the farm is too small to be divided fur...
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.
When a deep injury is done us, we never recover until we forgive.
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.
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.
God forgives us... who am I not to 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.
But the one thing that has power completely is love, because when a man loves, he seeks no power, and therefore he has power.
To give up the task of reforming society is to give up one's responsibility as a free man.
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.
If you wrote a novel in South Africa which didn't concern the central issues, it wouldn't be worth publishing.
You ask yourself not if this or that is expedient, but if it is right.
What broke in a man when he could bring himself to kill another?
