Quotes by South African Authors - Page 21

Most of the people who have verbally asserted that ‘there is no master of pronounciation’ have intentionally made a claim and unintentionally made their claim believable. (It is ‘pro-nun-ciation’ not ‘pro-noun-ciation’.)
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Regardless of what language it is said in, "I love you" stays beautiful, and two hearts beating together make the same sound. It is the language of Love.
Christina Engela
Nelson Mandela once said, 'If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.' He was so right. When you make the effort to speak someone else's language, even if it's just basic phrases here and there, you are saying to them, 'I understand that you have a culture and identity that exists beyond me. I see you as a human being
Trevor Noah
As you may follow, they are an extremely hostile species (i.e. there is no word for ‘welcome’ in the Ruminarii language.) In four short centuries they had managed to lay waste to almost a thousand star systems, enslaving their populations and stripping them of all they wanted.
Christina Engela
When you make the effort to speak someone else’s language, even if it’s just basic phrases here and there, you are saying to them, “I understand that you have a culture and identity that exists beyond me. I see you as a human being.
Trevor Noah
As you speak I swear I can hear words being selected, one after another, from the word-box you carry around with you, and slotted into place. That is not how a true native speak, one who is born into a language.’‘How does a native speak?’‘From the heart. Words well up within and he sings them, sings along with them. So to speak.
J.M. Coetzee
He would not mind hearing Petrus’s story one day. But preferably not reduced to English. More and more he is convinced that English is an unfit medium for the truth of South Africa.
J.M. Coetzee
Without language, one cannot talk to people and understand them; one cannot share their hopes and aspirations, grasp their history, appreciate their poetry, or savor their songs.
Nelson Mandela
If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.
Nelson Mandela
Happiness is a temporary recurring human experience.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
There is also hope that even in these days of increasing specialization there is a unity in the human experience.
Allan McLeod Cormack
In a materialistic society, an employed boy is older than an unemployed man.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Sometimes one doesn't have to be part of the experience to realize and learn from the experience.
Unarine Ramaru
But how wonderful when the tale is told,And the message that is meant for usOpens like the scents of a mountain flower!
Mazisi Kunene
Now your burnt ashes float to mingle with others And as I wait for another day I keep singing another song How did I go astray!
Lindiwe Mabuza
Everybody is talking about the Law of Attraction. Nobody is talking about the Law of Action.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Speaking about work isn’t working.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Being a philosopher requires a lot of thinking and no action. Being a model requires a lot of action and no thinking.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Strength is not determined by the looks but through action.
Gugu Mona
It's disheartening that most Christians will still miss Heaven because Christians today have forgotten that Heaven is meant for those who declare Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, then confirm that declaration with action.
Gugu Mona
Be cautious of every motive behind any action, because not every smile is genuine; sometimes it's just a grin.
Gift Gugu Mona
The word of God is more powerful when put into action than when only spoken.
Gift Gugu Mona
If I had done this, if I had said that, in the end you are always more tormented by what you didn't do than what you did, actions already performed can always be rationalized in time, the neglected deed might have changed the world.
Damon Galgut
With him I couldn’t be anything but myself and that scared the crap out of me, because I had never existed like that before.
Carlyle Labuschagne
A high self-esteem having artist works hard to be understood. A low self-esteem having artist works hard to be agreed with.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
A science is any discipline in which the fool of this generation can go beyond the point reached by the genius of the last generation.
Max Gluckman
There is always another layer of awareness, understanding, and delight to be discovered through synchronistic and serendipitous events.
Hannelie Venucia
Oh so we are neighbours?” She tried to smile sweetly, so Maggie felt like she could talk more. Maggie shrugged again, “Not for long.” Amari got goosebumps and asked, “Oh why? Where are you guys moving too?” Maggie looked at her again and said stoically, “No where.
Sian B. Claven
Amari swung around in her seat to look back and there was indeed a small girl sitting on the boundary wall. She didn’t seem to be looking at the car that had just passed but up ahead. Amari turned around to see what she was looking at and she saw it, up ahead, the farm house that she could only assume was their new home.
Sian B. Claven
Rethink Your Success Mindset: With the right mindset, everything that you experience, along your journey towards success, is a blessing.
Tony Dovale
Rethink Your Success Mindset: Gratitude is the attitude, fuel and catalyst that transforms life's challenges into wisdom.
Tony Dovale
Rethink Your Success Mindset: Times are getting tougher. We need tougher mindsets to ensure that we go beyond survive to thrive.
Tony Dovale
The survivor spoke to us though, or tried to. Mumbling through that matted brown beard of his, pale as death itself. I can’t say now if it was weakness from his wounds or what it was – but we struggled to understand him. In fact we got nothing intelligible from him at all then. He seemed afraid, like any dying man probably would be, but he did seem more terrified than any dying man I’ve seen before – and I’ve seen a few in my time. Let me tell you, Corsair or not, he grabbed whatever hand would hold his, and clenched it so tight his knuckles turned white! He kept fading out as we carried him on the stretcher board the medics brought with them. Looking back, I think he tried to warn us, poor bastard. He tried to tell us to leave him behind and go, but we wouldn’t listen. We thought we were better than the Corsairs, remember? We thought we would be all moral and upright and try to help him. ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’ were the last words he said before losing consciousness. At least, those that we could make out. At the end of it all, he was right – as it turned out, we couldn’t even help ourselves.
Christina Engela
Passion Has No Paperwork
Ellis Mnyandu
A shaman’s activities as a sorcerer, or his own conscious act of entry into the supernatural world, were a kind of “killing”.
James David Lewis-Williams
Rock art sites were symbolic vaginas, and entry into the wall of a rock art site was thus akin to intercourse.
James David Lewis-Williams
For the makers, the paintings and engravings were visions, not representations of visions.
James David Lewis-Williams
In Lascaux and other sites, hoofs are depicted to show their underside, or hoofprint.
James David Lewis-Williams
Under certain social circumstances, which may have varied from time to time and place to place, certain people (shamans) saw a relationship between the small, three-dimensional, projected mental images that they experienced at the far end of the intensified spectrum and fragments of animals that lay around their hearths.
James David Lewis-Williams
The portable animal statuettes were therefore far more than decorative trinkets: they were reified three-dimensional spirit animals with all their prophylactic and other powers.
James David Lewis-Williams
I now argue that entry into Upper Palaeolithic caves was probably seen as virtually indistinguishable from entry into the mental vortex that leads to the experiences and hallucinations of deep trance.
James David Lewis-Williams
Certainly, the sensory deprivation afforded by the remote, silent and totally dark chambers, such as the Diverticule of the Felines in Lascaux and the Horse’s Tail in Altamira, induces altered states of consciousness.
James David Lewis-Williams
To understand the ‘wounded men’ of Upper Palaeolithic art, I now consider somatic hallucinations; these include attenuation of the body and limbs, polymelia (having extra limbs or digits), and, the one on which I focus, pricking and stabbing sensations.
James David Lewis-Williams
Shamans submit to death in order to serve their communities.
James David Lewis-Williams
The Upper Palaeolithic figures known as ‘wounded men’ occur at Cougnac and Pech Merle, two sites in the Quercy district of France.
James David Lewis-Williams
The ‘wounded men’ may, I argue, represent a form of shamanistic suffering, ‘death’ and initiation that was closely associated with somatic hallucinati
James David Lewis-Williams
Sexual arousal and penal erections are associated with both altered states of consciousness and sleep.
James David Lewis-Williams
It is the task of San shamans to activate their supernatural potency, to cause it to ‘boil’ up their spines until it explodes in their heads and takes them off to the spirit realms – that is, they enter a state of trance at the far end of the intensified trajectory.
James David Lewis-Williams
According to Martindale’s view, as we drift into sleep we pass through: – waking, problem-oriented thought, – realistic fantasy, – autistic fantasy, – reverie, – hypnagogic (falling asleep) states, and – dreaming.
James David Lewis-Williams
In altered states of consciousness, the nervous system itself becomes a ‘sixth sense’ that produces a variety of images including entoptic phenomena.
James David Lewis-Williams
The behaviour of the human nervous system in certain altered states creates the illusion of dissociation from one’s body (less commonly understood in hunting and gathering shamanistic societies as possession by spirits).
James David Lewis-Williams
San religion is built around belief in a tiered universe. As do other shamanistic peoples throughout the world, the San believe in a realm above and another below the surface of the world on which they live.
James David Lewis-Williams
There were at least four contexts in which San shamans acquired insights into the spiritual world: – the trance dance, – special curing rituals, – viewing rock art, and – dreams.
James David Lewis-Williams
The principal aim of a vision quest is to ‘see’ a spirit animal that will become the quester’s animal-helper and source of his power.
James David Lewis-Williams
Entering a cave” or rock was a metaphor for a shaman’s altered state; therefore, caves (and rocks more generally) were considered entrances or portals to the supernatural world.
James David Lewis-Williams
The first two-dimensional images were thus not two-dimensional representations of three-dimensional things in the material world, as researchers have always assumed. Rather, they were ‘fixed’ mental images.
James David Lewis-Williams
Shamanism is not simply a component of society: on the contrary, shamanism, together with its tiered cosmos, can be said to be the overall framework of society.
James David Lewis-Williams
Perhaps the most striking feature of the west European Upper Palaeolithic, one on which many writers comment, is a sharp increase in the rate of change. Compared with the preceding Middle Palaeolithic, a great deal happened in a comparatively short time.
James David Lewis-Williams
The notion that an image is a scale model of something else (say, a horse) requires a different set of mental events and conventions from those that perceive the social symbolism of red marks on someone’s chest.
James David Lewis-Williams
Around 30,000 years ago, in the Aurignacian, at the beginning of the Upper Palaeolithic, someone or some group in the Eyzies region invented drawing, the representation in two dimensions on the flat of the stone of what appeared in the environment in three dimensions.
James David Lewis-Williams