Alan Paton said this quote

They were your friends?Yes, they were my friends.And they will leave you to suffer alone?Now I see it.And until this, were they friends you could trust?I could trust them.I see what you mean. You mean they were the kind of friends that a good man could choose, upright, hard-working, obeying the law?Tell me, were they such friends?And now they leave you alone?Did you not see it before?I saw it.

~ 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

There's a hard law, mejuffrou, that when a deep injury is done to us, we never recover until we forgive.

~ Alan Paton

— This world is full of trouble, umfundisi.— Who knows it better?— Yet you believe? Kumalo looked at him under the light of the lamp. I believe, he said, but I have learned that it is a secret. 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. There is my wife, and you, my friend, and these people who welcomed me, and the child who is so eager to be with us here in Ndotsheni – so in my suffering I can believe.— 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.Kumalo looked at his friend with joy. You are a preacher, he said.

~ Alan Paton