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273d808
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You can go through life and make new friends every year - every month practically - but there was never any substitute for those friendships of childhood that survive into adult years. Those are the ones in which we are bound to one another with hoops of steel.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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8e8a6b8
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It is sometimes easier to be happy if you don't know everything.
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irony
knowledge
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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9c730a1
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She was made for untidy rooms and rumpled beds.
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sex
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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b1edd16
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Gracious acceptance is an art - an art which most never bother to cultivate. We think that we have to learn how to give, but we forget about accepting things, which can be much harder than giving.... Accepting another person's gift is allowing him to express his feelings for you.
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receiving
giving
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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78f1dc2
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The telling of a story, like virtually everything in this life, was always made all the easier by a cup of tea.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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64a7f82
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It was time to take the pumpkin out of the pot and eat it. In the final analysis, that was what solved these big problems of life. You could think and think and get nowhere, but you still had to eat your pumpkin. That brought you down to earth. That gave you a reason for going on. Pumpkin.
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life
philosophy
pumpkin
life-philosophy
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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e3aa839
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We all know that it is women who make the decisions, but we have to let men think that the decisions are theirs. It is an act of kindness on the part of women.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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2de65ef
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That of all people, it should be him; that took her aback. That the heart should settle on somebody like him; that surprised her. But she was so certain about it, so certain.
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love
surprise
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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4a094b8
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Regular maps have few surprises: their contour lines reveal where the Andes are, and are reasonably clear. More precious, though, are the unpublished maps we make ourselves, of our city, our place, our daily world, our life; those maps of our private world we use every day; here I was happy, in that place I left my coat behind after a party, that is where I met my love; I cried there once, I was heartsore; but felt better round the corner o..
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place
maps
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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41707e9
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She had a taste for sugar, however, and this meant that a doughnut or a cake might follow the sandwich. She was a traditionally built lady, after all, and she did not have to worry about dress size, unlike those poor, neurotic people who were always looking in mirrors and thinking that they were too big. What was too big, anyway? Who was to tell another person what size they should be? It was a form of dictatorship, by the thin, and she was..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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b71a70a
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Be content with who you are and where you are, and do whatever you can do to bring to others such contentment, and joy, and understanding that you have managed to find yourself.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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bd3b9e8
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A life without stories would be no life at all. And stories bound us, did they not, one to another, the living to the dead, people to animals, people to the land?
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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60f636e
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Do not act meanly, do not be unkind, because the time for setting things right may pass before your heart changes course. Isabel Dalhousie
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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a26370e
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So the small things came into their own: small acts of helping others, if one could; small ways of making one's own life better: acts of love, acts of tea, acts of laughter. Clever people might laugh at such simplicity, but, she asked herself, what was their own solution?
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love
tea
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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4f1d5b2
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Mma Ramotswe sighed. 'We are all tempted, Mma. We are all tempted when it comes to cake.' That is true,' said Mma Potokwane sadly. 'There are many temptations in this life, but cake is probably one of the biggest of them.
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ramotswe
temptation
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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b8ee2a8
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But don't we often lie to people we love, or not tell them things, precisely because we love them?
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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53a215f
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every man has a map in his heart of his own country and that the heart will never allow you to forget this map. (p. 18)
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love-of-country
origins
homeland
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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6a175b5
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There are many women whose lives would be immeasurably improved by widowhood, but one should not always point that out.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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1d8b459
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If your ceiling should fall down, then you have lost a room, but gained a courtyard. Think of it that way.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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afe1981
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I am just a tiny person in Africa, but there is a place for me, and for everybody, to sit down on this earth and touch it and call it their own.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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2796adc
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Why is it that there are always these problems and misunderstandings between men and women? Surely it would have been better if God had made only one sort of person, and the children had come by some other means, with the rain perhaps.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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edc551e
|
Now constipation was quite a different matter...It would be dreadful for the whole world to know about troubles of that nature. She felt terribly sorry for people who suffered from constipation, and she knew that there were many who did. There were probably enough of them for a political party - with a chance of government perhaps - but what would such a party do if it was in power? Nothing, she imagined. It would try to pass legislation, b..
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politics
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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0060010
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We don't forget.... Our heads may be small, but they are as full of memories as the sky may sometimes be full of swarming bees, thousands and thousands of memories, of smells, of places, of little things that happened to us and which came back, unexpectedly, to remind us who we are.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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d48f02e
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She had so much love to give - she had always felt that - and now there was somebody to whom she could give this love, and that, she knew, was good; for that is what redeems us, that is what makes our pain and sorrow bearable - this giving of love to others, this sharing of the heart.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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c62a51a
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The problem, of course, was that people did not seem to understand the difference between right and wrong. They needed to be reminded about this, because if you left it to them to work out for themselves, they would never bother. They would just find out what was best for them, and then they would call that the right thing. That's how most people thought.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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4443b4d
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You are a lucky lady to be marrying a man who can fix things. Most husbands just break things.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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36a1d61
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He had been thinking of how landscape moulds a language. It was impossible to imagine these hills giving forth anything but the soft syllables of Irish, just as only certain forms of German could be spoken on the high crags of Europe; or Dutch in the muddy, guttural, phlegmish lowlands.
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landscape
german
language
irish
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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cfd8739
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There is plenty of work for love to do.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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40cec6e
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These men were like leeches; they sucked away at the goodness of a woman's heart until it was dry and all her love had been used up. That took a long time, he knew, because women seemed to have vast reservoirs of goodness in them
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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06a6649
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The previously unloved may find it hard to believe that they are now loved; that is such a miracle, they feel; such a miracle.
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life
love
miracles
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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783de94
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We find what we are looking for in life, her father had once said to her, which was true--if you look for happiness, you will see it; if you look for distrust and envy and hatred--all those things--you will find those too.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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63d5bac
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And if there's bad behaviour," Mma Potokwane went on. "If there's bad behaviour, the quickest way of stopping it is to give more love. That always works, you know. People say we must punish when there is wrongdoing, but if you punish you're only punishing yourself. And what's the point of that?"
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love
punishment
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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20b72dc
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Special things have a way of surviving.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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38e9082
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Traditional Botswana men like ladies who are more traditionally shaped. You and I, Mma. We remind men of how things used to be in Botswana before these modern-shaped ladies started to get men all confused.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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3d818e5
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If more women were in power, they wouldn't let wars break out," she said. "Women can't be bothered with all this fighting. We see war for what it is- a matter of broken bodies and crying mothers."
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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9fe0d08
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There was a teapot, in which Mma Ramotswe -- the only lady private detective in Botwana -- brewed tea. And three mugs -- one for herself, one for her secretary, and one for the client. What else does a detective agency really need?
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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b6cb390
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This was a townscape raised in the teeth of cold winds from the east; a city of winding cobbled streets and haughty pillars; a city of dark nights and candlelight, and intellect.
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edinburgh
intellect
city
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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57f61da
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You have to leave your heart to get on with it. It's rather like breathing. We don't have to remind ourselves to breathe.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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ce4b2e6
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She had not made a lot of money, but she had not made a loss, and she had been happy and entertained. That counted for infinitely more than a vigorously healthy balance sheet. In fact, she thought, annual accounts should include an item specifically headed Happiness, alongside expenses and receipts and the like.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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c20412f
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There was a distinction between lying and telling half-truths, but it was a very narrow one.
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truth
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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2c99307
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Mma Ramotswe thinking about what her father taught her...) "Having the right approach to life was a great gift in this life....Do not complain about your life. Do not blame others for things that you have brought upon yourself. Be content with who you are and where you are, and do whatever you can do to bring to others such contentment, and joy, and understanding that you have managed to find yourself...You can do that in the company of an ..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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99ba7a7
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She was not sure if she would want him to have known; we do not always wish for those for whom we long to know that we long for them, especially if the longing is impossible, or inappropriate. . . to be loved by the unlovable was not something that most people could cope with.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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52aa7bc
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Do you realise that people die of boredom in London suburbs? It's the second biggest cause of death amongs the English in general. Sheer boredom...
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death
suburbia
england
london
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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200ab09
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Women are the ones who knows what's going on,' she said quietly . 'They are the ones with eyes. Have you not heard of Agatha Christie?
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women
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Alexander McCall Smith |