“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.”

Keep it, guard it, care for it, for it keeps men, guards men, cares for men. Destroy it and man is destroyed.

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

Such development has only one true name, and that is exploitation.

Behind the polished panelling the white ant eats away the wood. Nothing is ever quiet, except for fools

For who can stop the heart from breaking?

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.

The tragedy is that things are not mended again.

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.

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.

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.