“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.”

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.

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?

Then some unknown rebellion brewed in you, doing harm to you, though how I do not understand.

I have never thought that a Christian would be free of suffering, umfundisi.

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

Pain and suffering, they are a secret. Kindness and love, they are a secret.

The sun pours down on the earth, on the lovely land that man cannot enjoy. He knows only the fear of his heart.

Nothing is ever quiet, except for fools.

All roads lead to Johannesburg.

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

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.

Sadness and fear and hate, how they well up in the heart and mind, whenever one opens pages of these messengers of doom.

The only way in which one can make endurable man’s inhumanity to man.

Nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him if he gives too much.

Cry, the beloved country, these things are not yet at an end.

She taught me to seek sustenance from the endeavor itself, but to leave the result to God.

The chief source of man’s inhumanity to man seems to be the tribal limits of his sense of obligation to other men.

She is inhumanly alone. And then, all at once, she isn’t.

I am constantly amazed by man’s inhumanity to man.

Humanity is best described as inhumanity.

The only way in which one can make endurable man’s inhumanity to man.