I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they are turned to loving, they will find that we are turned to hating.
Interpretation
The fear of losing love to hatred emphasizes the fragility of human connections.
This quote expresses a profound concern about the potential shift from love to hate in relationships. Alan Paton highlights the anxiety that arises when love is not reciprocated or is lost, suggesting that love can be easily turned to hatred if not nurtured with care and mutual respect. It serves as a reminder that maintaining love requires effort and understanding to prevent it from deteriorating into animosity.
In practice
During a discussion on the importance of empathy in relationships, this quote serves to remind us of the consequences of neglecting love.
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.
Ask yourself not if this or that is expedient, but if it is right.
One day in Johannesburg, and already the tribe was being rebuilt, the house and soul being restored.
What broke in a man when he could bring himself to kill another? 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?
It is not permissible to add to one's possesions if these things can only be done at the cost of other men. Such development has only one true name, and that is exploitation.
If you wrote a novel in South Africa which didn't concern the central issues, it wouldn't be worth publishing.
I don't even know how to speak up for myself, because I don't really have a father who would give me the confidence or advice.
Being gay is a natural normal beautiful variation on being human. Period. End of subject. Therefore, any argument which says differently is an immoral supremacist one. Call it out as such. ... Be outraged, offended, angry and intolerant of any discussion or any one who describes you as unequal, undeserving or unnatural for being just as you are.
Relationships, not achievements or the acquisition of things, are what matters most in life.
We're trained to see only male or female and to plot people into those categories when they actually don't fit neatly at all. But if we pause, watch and listen closely we'll see the multiplicity of ways in which people are sexed and gendered. There exists a range of personal identifications around woman, man, in-between-we don't even have names or pronouns that reflect that in between place but people certainly live in it.
Stories are the currency of human relationships.
Women are books, and men the readers be.
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