# Quote — Alan Paton, Cry, The Beloved Country

> The white man has broken the tribe. And it is my belief—and again I ask your pardon—that it cannot be mended again. But the house that is broken, and the man that falls apart when the house is broken, these are the tragic things. That is why children break the law, and old white people are robbed and beaten.

- Author: [Alan Paton](https://www.leafyquotes.com/alan-paton.md)
- Book: [Cry, The Beloved Country](https://www.leafyquotes.com/alan-paton/cry-the-beloved-country.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alan_Paton#Cry,_the_Beloved_Country,_(1948)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/alan-paton/cry-the-beloved-country/the-white-man

## More from this book

> Sorrow is better than fear. Fear is a journey,a terrible journey, but sorrow is at least an arrival. 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.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/alan-paton/cry-the-beloved-country/sorrow-is-better.md)

> 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.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/alan-paton/cry-the-beloved-country/pain-and-suffering.md)

> And now for all the people of Africa, the beloved country. Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika, God save Africa. But he would not see that salvation. It lay afar off, because men were afraid of it. Because, to tell the truth, they were afraid of him, and his wife, and Msimangu, and the young demonstrator. And what was there evil in their desires, in their hunger? That man should walk upright in the land where they were born, and be free to use the fruits of the earth, what was there evil in it? . . . They were afraid because they were so few. And such fear could not be cast out, but by love.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/alan-paton/cry-the-beloved-country/and-now-for.md)