It is not permissible to add to one’s possesions if these things can only be done at the cost of other men.
ALAN PATONTo give up the task of reforming society is to give up one’s responsibility as a free man.
More Alan Paton Quotes
-
-
There is not much talking now. A silence falls upon them all.
ALAN PATON -
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 -
Although nothing has come yet, something is here already.
ALAN PATON -
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 -
Money is for buying the fruits of the earth, of the land where you were born.
ALAN PATON -
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.
ALAN PATON -
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 -
I have always found that actively loving saves one from a morbid preoccupation with the shortcomings of society.
ALAN PATON -
Sorrow is better than fear. Fear is a journey, a terrible journey. But, sorrow is at least an arriving.
ALAN PATON -
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.
ALAN PATON -
Money is to make happy the lives of children. Money is for security, and for dreams, and for hopes, and for purposes.
ALAN PATON -
Such development has only one true name, and that is exploitation.
ALAN PATON -
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 -
For mines are for men, not for money. And money is not something to go mad about, and throw your hat into the air for.
ALAN PATON -
There are voices crying what must be done, a hundred, a thousand voices.
ALAN PATON -
The ground is holy, being even as it came from the Creator.
ALAN PATON -
There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills.
ALAN PATON -
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 -
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 -
We do not work for men. We work for the land and the people. We do not even work for money.
ALAN PATON -
For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much.
ALAN PATON -
One thing is about to be finished, but here is something that is only begun. And while I live it will continue
ALAN PATON -
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?
ALAN PATON -
All roads lead to Johannesburg.
ALAN PATON -
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 -
I am a weak and sinful man, but God put His hands on me, that is all.
ALAN PATON