Alan Paton

Alan Stewart Paton (11 January 1903 – 12 April 1988) was a South African author and anti-apartheid activist.

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Quotes

We had two masters of the spoken word in South Africa, General Smuts and his lieutenant J. H. Hofmeyr, whose life I wrote. Smuts spoke in a high-pitched voice, not the kind of voice that one would expect from a famous soldier, but he too could hold an audience in the hollow of his hand, partly because he was Smuts, partly because he could say nothing trite or shallow, partly because he knew how to speak to ordinary men and women.
- Alan Paton on Smuts's oratory, in Paton's final essay, A Literary Remembrance, published posthumously in TIME, 25 April 1988, p. 106.

Cry, the Beloved Country, (1948)

I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they are turned to loving, they will find we are turned to hating.

The white man has broken the tribe. And it is my belief—and again I ask your pardon—that it cannot be mended again. But the house that is broken, and the man that falls apart when the house is broken, these are the tragic things. That is why children break the law, and old white people are robbed and beaten.
- Msimangu makes this statement after he welcomes Kumalo to Johannesburg, while discussing the troubles of Gertrude and Absalom. Chapter 5

I see only one hope for our country, and that is when white men and black men . . . desiring only the good of their country, come together to work for it. . . . I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they are turned to loving, they will find we are turned to hating.
- Msimangu speaks these words immediately after he and Kumalo meet with John. Chapter 7

This is no time to talk of hedges and fields, or the beauties of any country. . . . Cry for the broken tribe, for the law and the custom that is gone. Aye, and cry aloud for the man who is dead, for the woman and children bereaved. Cry, the beloved country, these things are not yet at an end.
- This quotation stands in contrast to the novel’s early tendency to dwell on the lush South African landscape and urges sorrow instead. Chapter 11

The truth is that our civilization is not Christian; it is a tragic compound of great ideal and fearful practice, of high assurance and desperate anxiety, of loving charity and fearful clutching of possessions. Allow me a minute. . . .
- These words are written by Arthur Jarvis and read by his father. Chapter 21

And now for all the people of Africa, the beloved country. Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika, God save Africa. But he would not see that salvation. It lay afar off, because men were afraid of it. Because, to tell the truth, they were afraid of him, and his wife, and Msimangu, and the young demonstrator. And what was there evil in their desires, in their hunger? That man should walk upright in the land where they were born, and be free to use the fruits of the earth, what was there evil in it? . . . They were afraid because they were so few. And such fear could not be cast out, but by love.
- These thoughts are part of the novel’s conclusion, as Kumalo keeps his vigil on the mountain while Absalom hangs. Kumalo prays for Africa.

The tragedy is not that things are broken. The tragedy is that things are not mended again.

...there is only one thing that has power completely, and this is love. Because when a man loves, he seeks no power, and therefore he has power.

Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that's the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing. Nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him if he gives too much.

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.

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.

Sorrow is better than fear. Fear is a journey,a terrible journey, but sorrow is at least an arrival. 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.

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.

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.

Happy the eyes that can close.

For who can stop the heart from breaking?

I see only one hope for our country, and that is when white men and black men, desiring neither power nor money, but desiring only the good for their country, come together to work for it. I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they are turned to loving, they will find we are turned to hating.

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

Indeed, mother, you are always our helper.

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. Money is for food and clothes and comfort, and a visit to the pictures. Money is to make happy the lives of children. Money is for security, and for dreams, and for hopes, and for purposes. Money is for buying the fruits of the earth, of the land where you were born.

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

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.

...let us sell our labour for what it is worth. And if an industry cannot buy our labour, let that industry die. But let us not sell our labour cheap to keep an industry alive.

I do this not because I am courageous and honest, but because it is the only way to end the conflict of my deepest soul.

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

He had come to tell his brother that power corrupts, that a man who fights for justice must himself be cleansed and purified, that love is greater than force. And none of these things had he done. God have mercy on me, Christ have mercy on me. He turned to the door, but it was locked and bolted. Brother had shut out brother, from the same womb had they come.

...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.

I say we shall always have native crime to fear until the native people of this country have worthy goals to work for. For it is only because they see neither purpose nor goal that they turn to drink and crime and prostitution.

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?

Too Late the Phalarope (1953)

...And the heart is black too, and the world is black, and one can tell oneself that it will pass, but these are only words that one speaks to oneself, for while it is there it is no comfort that it will pass.

But to punish and not to restore, that is the greatest of all offences.

...when a deep injury is done to us, we never recover until we forgive.

...if man takes unto himself God's right to punish, then he must also take upon himself God's promise to restore.

For a man can be happy and free, and be cast down by a word. And a woman can be in the depths of misery, and be lifted up by an asking for forgiveness. So one goes from joy to dejection, and hurt to exaltation, and certainty to doubt, as when with some summer storm the whole world is dark and sombre, till suddenly the sun breaks through, almost at its setting, and bathes tree and grass and hill in green and yellow light, the link of which, as the English say, was never seen on land or sea.

Why a man should have great strengths and great weakness I do not understand. For the first call him to honour, and the second to dishonour; and the first to fame and the second to destruction
- pg. 4

The light of the body is the eye, and when the eye is true then is the body full of light, but when the eye is evil, then is the body dark.
- pg. 28

A word from you is twice as severe because it comes from you.
- pg. 35

....for the black moods and the angers and the cold withdrawals that robbed her of the simple joys of her quiet and humble life.
- pg. 86

Quotes about Alan Paton

Like many others in the United States, South Africa came into my field of vision when I read Cry the Beloved Country, Alan Paton's best-selling novel. Reading Cry the Beloved Country may have been the first time I caught an objective glimpse of myself, my family, and the land we cherished and considered ours (although we were sharecroppers, my paternal grandparents had owned land). I began to understand that we were settlers on stolen land, with the native people separate and invisible, that realization dawning against the distant drum of the civil rights movement coming ever closer to home. Yet it was not a sense of guilt I felt; how could I, a dirt-poor half-breed myself, feel guilty in any terms not proscribed by the Baptist preacher? What I felt instead was a sense of enormous responsibility, and that felt liberating, made me feel in control of my destiny, made me feel I could change the world and make a better place for people like me to live in, liberation of the damned as Frantz Fanon put it.
- Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Outlaw Woman (2001)

External links

Wikipedia

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Alan Paton