Who knows for what we live, and struggle, and die?... 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.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the deep and complex purpose of life, suggesting it transcends human understanding.
Alan Paton's quote delves into the existential questions of life, emphasizing that the true purpose behind our existence is a profound mystery that cannot be fully grasped by human intellect. While wise individuals may attempt to articulate life's meaning through complex writings, the essence of why we live, struggle, and ultimately die remains elusive and beyond the limits of our wisdom.
In practice
In a graduation speech, to inspire students to seek their own purpose.
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.
Women must write through their bodies, they must invent the impregnable language that will wreck partitions, classes, and rhetorics, regulations and codes, they must submerge, cut through, get beyond the ultimate reverse-discourse, including the one that laughs at the very idea of pronouncing the word "silence"...In one another we will never be lacking.
Religion survives because it answers three questions that every reflective person must ask. Who am I? Why am I here? How then shall I live?
I was thinking, that when my time comes, I should be sorry if the only plea I had to offer was that of justice. Because it might mean that only justice would be meted out to me.
The analysis of concepts is for the understanding nothing more than what the magnifying glass is for sight
Though it be in the power of the weakest arm to take away life, it is not in the strongest to deprive us of death.
I don't know whether you can look at your past and find, woven like the hidden symbols on a treasure map, the path that will point to your final destination.
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