We have to be utterly broken before we can realize that it is impossible to better the truth. It is the truth that we deny which so tenderly and forgivingly picks up the fragments and puts them together again.
—Laurens Van der Post
Reality, no matter how widened and heightened our perceptions, never ceases to be anything but the effect on us of an infinite mystery.
—Laurens Van der Post
The sense of smell in the animal is what intuition is to the human spirit. It tells you of the invisible, of what cannot be detected by any other means. It tells you the things that are not there, yet are coming. You see into the blind, opaque past and round the corner of time.
—Laurens Van der Post
Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right.
—Laurens Van der Post