19 Quotes by Laurens van der Post

That is the trouble, everybody is giving everything in the world a piece of their minds. Whereas what we want is not a piece of somebody’s mind, even the best mind, so much as an open heart and an open spirit.

You may well be right, and disaster may well come, I had told him. But for me it will always be a point of honour to go on working to prevent disaster, if only to make certain it is the right kind of disaster life needs when it does ultimately come.

We have a mighty task before us. The earth needs our assistance.

Of all of men’s inborn dispositions there is none more heroic than love. Love will fight no-love every inch of the way.

Life is its own journey, presupposes its own change and movement, and one tries to arrest them at one’s eternal peril.

Creativity and love come from the same source.

On the night that the Second World war was declared, there were crowds in the street. It was a summer’s night and there was a blackout. On every side you heard people crying: ‘Look at the moon!’ The moon had been there every minute of their lives and they’d never seen it.

The only death the spirit recognizes is the denial of birth to that which strives to be born: those realities in ourselves that we have not allowed to live. The real ghost is a strange, persistent beggar at a narrow door asking to be born; asking, again and again, for admission at the gateway of our lives. Such ghosts I had, and thus, beyond all reason, I continued to be haunted.

You cannot take the life of your times further than you have taken yourself.