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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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Alan Patton
Alan Stewart Paton
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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 arriving.
Alan Paton
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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.
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Forgive us all, for we all have trespasses.
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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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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 the polished panelling the white ant eats away the wood. Nothing is ever quiet, except for fools
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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Nosecond Johannesburg isneededuponthe earth.One is enough.
Alan Paton
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We do not work for men. We work for the land and the people. We do not even work for money.
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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For who can stop the heart from breaking?
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
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The Afrikaner has nowhere to go, and thats why he would rather destroy himself than capitulate.
Alan Paton
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I have never thought that a Christian would be free of suffering, umfundisi. For our Lord suffered. And I come to believe that he suffered, not to save us from suffering, but to teach us how to bear suffering. For he knew that there is no life without suffering.
Alan Paton
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The ground is holy, being even as it came from the Creator. Keep it, guard it, care for it, for it keeps men, guards men, cares for men. Destroy it and man is destroyed.
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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When men are ruled by fear, they strive to prevent the very changes that will abate it.
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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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.
Alan Paton
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One thing is about to be finished, but here is something that is only begun. And while I live it will continue
Alan Paton
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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.
Alan Paton