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It was not his habit to dwell on what could have been, but what could never be.

Alan Paton

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Alan Paton
Age: 85 †
Born: 1903
Born: January 11
Died: 1988
Died: April 12
Author
Autobiographer
Politician
Screenwriter
Writer
Alan Patton
Alan Stewart Paton
Alen Peṭon
Dwell
Habit
Never

More quotes by Alan Paton

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When I go up there, which is my intention, the Big Judge will say to me, Where are your wounds? and if I say I haven’t any, he will say, Was there nothing to fight for? I couldn’t face that question. (Ah, But Your Land Is Beautiful)
Alan Paton
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The only way in which one can make endurable man's inhumanity to man, and man's destruction of his own environment, is to exemplify in your own lives man's humanity to man and man's reverence for the place in which he lives.
Alan Paton
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Let me not be afraid to defend the weak because of the anger of the strong, nor afraid to defend the poor because of the anger of the rich.
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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.
Alan Paton
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Something deep is touched here, something that is good and deep.
Alan Paton
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One day in Johannesburg, and already the tribe was being rebuilt, the house and soul being restored.
Alan Paton
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But the one thing that has power completely is love, because when a man loves, he seeks no power, and therefore he has power.
Alan Paton
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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.
Alan Paton
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What broke in a man when he could bring himself to kill another? What broke when he could bring himself to thrust down the knife into the warm flesh, to bring down the axe on the living head, to cleave down between the seeing eyes, to shoot the gun that would drive death into the beating heart?
Alan Paton
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And were your back as broad as heaven, and your purse full of gold, and did your compassion reach from here to hell itself, there is nothing you can do.
Alan Paton
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Nothing is ever quiet, except for fools.
Alan Paton
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It is my belief that the only power which can resist the power of fear is the power of love.
Alan Paton
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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.
Alan Paton
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And money is not something to go mad about ... Money is for food and clothes and comfort, and a visit to the pictures. Money is to make happy the lives of children.
Alan Paton
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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.
Alan Paton
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It is not permissible for us to go on destroying the family life when we know that we are destroying it.
Alan Paton
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Although nothing has come yet, something is here already.
Alan Paton
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The tragedy is not that things are broken. The tragedy is that things are not mended again.
Alan Paton
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But to punish and not to restore, that is the greatest of all offences.
Alan Paton
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Happy the eyes that can close
Alan Paton