Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton

• In pardoning we are pardoned.
• You have opened a door, and because you have opened it, we must go through.
• God forgives us, who am I not to forgive?
• It is strange how we move forward in some things, and stand still in others, and go backward in yet others.
• They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.
• While there is life, there is hope for amendment of life.
• If one could only have been told, this step is taken, and this step is about to be taken.
• Sorrow is better than fear. For fear impoverishes always, while sorrow may enrich.
• Fear is a journey, a terrible journey, but sorrow is at least an arriving.
• 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.
• No one can comprehend the ways of God.
• Do not pray to understand the ways of God. For they are secret. Who knows what life is, for life is a secret.
• Give thanks where you can give thanks. For nothing is better.
• We do what is in us, and why it is in us, that is also a secret. It is Christ in us, crying that men may be succoured and forgiven, even when He Himself is forsaken.
• I desire nothing that is not here.
• His life was his own, and no other man had a right to put his hands on it.
• It's more important to speak the truth than to make money.
• Nothing is too much trouble.
• It is not permissible to keep men unskilled for the sake of unskilled work.
• It is not permissible to add to one's possessions if these things can only be done at the cost of other men. Such development has only one true name, and that is exploitation.
• 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, or loving charity and fearful clutching of possessions.
• It takes all kinds to make a world.
• Money is not something to go made 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.
• I am moved by something that is not my own, that moves me to do what is right, at whatever cost it may be.
• It is a man's freedom to sell his labour for what it is worth.
• Nothing is ever quiet, except for fools.
• If the law is the law of a society that some feel to be unjust, it is the law and the society that must be changed.
• Who can stop the heart from breaking?
• The men who do the work cannot be kept down for ever. If they will stand together who will stand against them?
• I hate no man. I hate only injustice.
• Power corrupts. A man who fights for justice must himself be cleansed and purified. Love is greater than force.
• Kindness and love can pay for pan and suffering. For our Lord suffered. And I come to believe that he suffered, not to save us from suffering, but to tech us how to bear suffering. For he knew that there is no life without suffering.
• There is not even good farming without the truth.
• We do not work for men. We work for the land and the people. We do not even work for money.
• Hate no man, and desire power over no man.
• There is enough hating in our land already.
• Perhaps the darkness gives courage.

3/10/2007