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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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Alan Paton
Age: 85 †
Born: 1903
Born: January 11
Died: 1988
Died: April 12
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More quotes by Alan Paton

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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.
Alan Paton
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For it is the dawn that has come, as it has come for a thousand centuries, never failing.
Alan Paton
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Although nothing has come yet, something is here already.
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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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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Ask yourself not if this or that is expedient, but if it is right.
Alan Paton
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Nothing is ever quiet, except for fools.
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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Happy the eyes that can close
Alan Paton
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Sorrow is better than fear. Fear is a journey, a terrible journey. But, sorrow is at least an arriving.
Alan Paton
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because life slips away, and because I need for the rest of my journey a star that will not play false to me, a compass that will not lie.
Alan Paton
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I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they are turned to loving, they will find that we are turned to hating.
Alan Paton
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There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills.
Alan Paton
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For who can stop the heart from breaking?
Alan Paton
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It is not forgive and forget as if nothing wrong had ever happened, but forgive and go forward, building on the mistakes of the past and the energy generated by reconciliation to create a new future.
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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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.
Alan Paton
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Pain and suffering, they are a secret. Kindness and love, they are a secret. But I have learned that kindness and love can pay for pain and suffering.
Alan Paton
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It is not permissible to add to one's possesions if these things can only be done at the cost of other men. Such development has only one true name, and that is exploitation.
Alan Paton
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St. Francis of Assisi taught me that there is a wound in the Creation and that the greatest use we could make of our lives was to ask to be made a healer of it.
Alan Paton