Mongane Wally Serote Quotes

We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.

Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones. It is not fair. He has fame and profit enough as a poet, and should not be taking the bread out of other people's mouths. I do not like him, and do not mean to like Waverley if I can help it, but fear I must.

To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others.

I'm out here a thousand miles from my home
Walkin' a road other men have gone down
I'm seein' your world of people and things
Your paupers and peasants and princes and kings

Schultz: You must speak.
Jewish barber: I can't.
Schultz: It's our only hope.

For this too is a very pleasant strand woven into the Cynic's pattern of life; he must needs be flogged like an ass, and while he is being flogged he must love the men who flog him, as though he were the father or brother of them all.

I must learn to brook being happier than I deserve.

How many times must a man look up before he can see the sky?

The Mississippi and its paddle boats, and the rivers of Bengal and their gleaming steamers evoked a similar atmosphere of romance, of long, song-filled voyages, high winds and lonely sunsets.

We must not contradict, but instruct him that contradicts us; for a madman is not cured by another running mad also.

The virtuous who are prosperous must be exalted, and the virtuous who are not prosperous must be exalted too.

Who sits alone by the bright window?
My shadow and I, only we two.
But the lamp burns out, there is darkness.
Even my shadow forsakes me.
Alas, alas!
I am forlorn!

Mathematics takes us still further from what is human, into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the world, but every possible world, must conform.

[J]ustification of power must be the central problem. For it is through this problem alone that freedom and equality—or... justice—can be projected into the social and political reality... But to fascism the problem does not even exist except as a ridiculous relic of "Jewish liberalism.

[One] must look into hell before one has any right to speak of heaven.

What is the purpose of houses? It is to protect us from the wind and cold of winter, the heat and rain of summer, and to keep out robbers and thieves. Once these ends have been secured, that is all. Whatever does not contribute to these ends should be eliminated.[6]