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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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But to punish and not to restore, that is the greatest of all offences.
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One day in Johannesburg, and already the tribe was being rebuilt, the house and soul being restored.
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I am a weak and sinful man, but God put His hands on me, that is all.
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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.
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Ask yourself not if this or that is expedient, but if it is right.
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Sorrow is better than fear. Fear is a journey, a terrible journey. But, sorrow is at least an arriving.
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Although nothing has come yet, something is here already.
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For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much.
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But perhaps when you were too obedient, and did not do openly what others did, and were quiet in church and hard-working at school, then some unknown rebellion brewed in you, doing harm to you, though how I do not understand.
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To give up the task of reforming society is to give up one's responsibility as a free man.
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For who can stop the heart from breaking?
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The tragedy is not that things are broken. The tragedy is that things are not mended again.
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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.
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If you wrote a novel in South Africa which didn't concern the central issues, it wouldn't be worth publishing.
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Something deep is touched here, something that is good and deep.
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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.
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Forgive us all, for we all have trespasses.
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?
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When a deep injury is done us, we never recover until we forgive.
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