I have always found that actively loving saves one from a morbid preoccupation with the shortcomings of society.
Interpretation
Practicing love helps divert attention from societal flaws.
This quote by Alan Paton suggests that actively engaging in love and compassion can prevent individuals from becoming overly absorbed in negative thoughts about societal problems. It emphasizes the importance of love as a force that can uplift and inspire, steering one's focus away from the shortcomings and deficiencies of the world around them.
In practice
During a speech about community service, one might quote this to highlight the power of love in addressing social issues.
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.
There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.
Love is a well from which we can drink only as much as we have put in, and the stars that shine from it are only our eyes looking in.
Their love as a dragonfly, skimming over echo park, stoppin to visit the lotus. Eating dreams and drinking blue sky.
Being gay is not something that defines me. What defines me is what my mom always taught me: to treat everyone with respect, to always be a hard worker, and to be kind.
What I say is that the supreme and singular joy of making love resides in the certainty of doing evil.
We outgrow love like other things and put it in a drawer, till it an antique fashion shows like costumes grandsires wore.
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