Top 80 Alan Paton Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “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

2. “I have always found that actively loving saves one from a morbid preoccupation with the shortcomings of society.”

— Alan Paton

3. “There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills. These hills are grass-covered and rolling, and they are lovely beyond any singing of it...”

— Alan Paton

4. “When a deep injury is done us, we never recover until we forgive.”

— Alan Paton

5. “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

6. “I am a weak and sinful man, but God put His hands on me, that is all.”

— Alan Paton

7. “The tragedy is not that things are broken. The tragedy is that things are not mended again.”

— Alan Paton

8. “Sorrow is better than fear. Fear is a journey, a terrible journey. But, sorrow is at least an arriving.”

— Alan Paton

9. “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

10. “But when the dawn will come, of our emancipation, from the fear of bondage and the bondage of fear, why, that is a secret.”

— Alan Paton

11. “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

12. “For it is the dawn that has come, as it has come for a thousand centuries, never failing.”

— Alan Paton

13. “All roads lead to Johannesburg.”

— Alan Paton

14. “Life has not taught me to expect nothing, but she has taught me not to expect success to be the inevitable result of my endeavors. She taught me to seek sustenance from the endeavor itself, but to leave the result to God.”

— Alan Paton

15. “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

16. “When men are ruled by fear, they strive to prevent the very changes that will abate it.”

— Alan Paton

17. “Happy the eyes that can close.”

— Alan Paton

18. “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

19. “One thing is about to be finished, but here is something that is only begun. And while I live it will continue.”

— Alan Paton

20. “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

21. “It is my belief that the only power which can resist the power of fear is the power of love.”

— Alan Paton

22. “To give up the task of reforming society is to give up one’s responsibility as a free man.”

— Alan Paton

23. “There is only one thing that has power completely, and that is love.”

— Alan Paton

24. “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.”

— Alan Paton

25. “If you wrote a novel in South Africa which didn’t concern the central issues, it wouldn’t be worth publishing.”

— Alan Paton

26. “Ask yourself not if this or that is expedient, but if it is right.”

— Alan Paton

27. “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

28. “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.”

— Alan Paton

29. “Cry, the beloved country, these things are not yet at an end. The sun pours down on the earth, on the lovely land that man cannot enjoy. He knows only the fear of his heart.”

— Alan Paton

30. “There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills...”

— Alan Paton

31. “It is not permissible for us to go on destroying the family life when we know that we are destroying it.”

— Alan Paton

32. “Nothing is ever quiet, except for fools.”

— Alan Paton

33. “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

34. “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

35. “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

36. “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

37. “One day in Johannesburg, and already the tribe was being rebuilt, the house and soul being restored.”

— Alan Paton

38. “Now God be thanked that the name of a hill is such music, that the name of a river can heal.”

— Alan Paton

39. “We do not work for men. We work for the land and the people. We do not even work for money.”

— Alan Paton

40. “He says we are not forsaken. For while I wonder for what we live and struggle and die, for while I wonder what keeps us living and struggling, men are sent to minister to the blind... Who gives, at this one hour, a friend to make darkness light before me?”

— Alan Paton

41. “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

42. “Aye, but the hand that had murdered had once pressed the mother’s breast into the thirsting mouth, had stolen into the father’s hand when they went out into the dark. Aye, but the murderer afraid of death had once been a child afraid of the night.”

— Alan Paton

43. “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

44. “For who can stop the heart from breaking?”

— Alan Paton

45. “Have no doubt it is fear in the land. For what can men do when so many have grown lawless? Who can enjoy the lovely land, who can enjoy the seventy years, and the sun that pours down on the earth, when there is fear in the heart? Who can walk quietly in the shadow of the jacarandas, when their beauty is grown to danger? Who can lie peacefully abed, while the darkness holds some secret? What lovers can lie sweetly under the stars, when menace grows with the measure of their seclusion?”

— Alan Paton

46. “Something deep is touched here, something that is good and deep.”

— Alan Paton

47. “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

48. “He went out of the door, and she watched him through the little window, walking slowly to the door of the church. Then she sat down at his table, and put her head on it, and was silent, with the patient suffering of black women, with the suffering of oxen, with the suffering of any that are mute.”

— Alan Paton

49. “The humble man reached in his pocket for his sacred book, and began to read. It was this world alone that was certain.”

— Alan Paton

50. “It is the duty of a judge to do justice, but it is only the people who can be just.”

— Alan Paton