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0939ccb
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Do you know that dogs are descendants of wolves--all dogs, even those ridiculous little dogs you see in the parks. Wolves. Imagine how embarrassed a real wolf would be if he knew that he was cousin to a shih-tzu? Of course, we shouldn't think animals have feelings like us--I don't think they can be embarrassed, do you? My daughter's cat is incapable of feeling anything very much, I can tell you--and certainly not embarrassment...
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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63ac92a
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this was a consequence of increasing prosperity, which, curiously enough, just seemed to bring out greed and selfishness.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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f30b013
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What else do you need in life, Mma? You have a fine husband--which is one of the most important things that anybody can have.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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59def9e
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I like you when you're algebraic," said Ulf--and immediately regretted it. It was a flirtatious remark--describing somebody as algebraic was undoubtedly to cross a line. You would not normally describe an ordinary friend as algebraic, and then say that you liked her that way."
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flirting
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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2195221
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Life happens, she thought; whatever we do, life just happens.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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490ae80
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He thought of all the ways that so many people felt about life. Life was a matter of regret--how could it be anything else? We knew that we would lose the things we loved; we knew that sooner or later we would lose everything, and beyond that was a darkness, a state of non-being that we found hard to imagine, let alone accept.
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life
regret
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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5c79c6e
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But please be careful--and never, never think that you are justified in doing something wrong just because you are trying to do something right.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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bfcedf7
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bureaucracy was very rarely an obstruction, provided that one applied to it the insights of ordinary, everyday psychology
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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758533a
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Tea, thought Mma Ramotswe - no matter what was happening, no matter how difficult things became, there was always the tea break - that still moment, that unchangeable ritual, that survived everything, made normal the abnormal, renewed one's ability to cope with whatever the world laid before one. Tea.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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f5a902d
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Truth had a way of coming out on top--and it was just as well for everybody that it did. If there ever came a day when truth was so soundly defeated that it never emerged, but sank, instead, under the sheer volume of untruth that the world produced, then that would be a sad day for Botswana, and for the people who lived in Botswana. It would be a sad day for the whole world, that day.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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e08b440
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That young man will go far, she said. I don't know in what direction, but he will go far.
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direction
life
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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e90a1ca
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It shall be an offence for any man, either a husband or other person of the male sex, married or otherwise, being over the age of twelve years, to throw any item of clothing having been worn by the said person for whatever length of time, upon the floor of any bathroom or any room adjacent to and connected to a bathroom, without good cause.
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boys
laundry
men
messiness
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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a511da9
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There was the Queen, and then there was Seretse Khama and our own people. That is called history, you see." "But who asked them here?" The aunt shook her head. "There are some guests who do not knock." "That is very rude." "Yes," said the aunt."
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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d209f38
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A flaky skin was particularly bad if you were a criminal, she had read, as it meant that you left a great deal of DNA at the scene of the crime. That had amused her. That would teach any flaky-skinned housebreakers to burgle people's houses. "You really need to do something about your skin," the police might say to such people when they arrested them."
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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9ac2e1f
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Our possessing of our world is a temporary matter: we stamp our ownership upon our surroundings, give familiar names to the land about us, erect statues of ourselves, but all of this is swept away, so quickly, so easily. We think the world is ours for ever, but we are little more than squatters.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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f563392
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Auden returns to one of his most important themes--that of repairing the tragic division in our lives, of making us whole again: While, as they lie in the grass of our neglect, So many long-forgotten objects Revealed by his undisclosed shining Are returned to us and made precious again; Games we thought we must drop as we grew up, Little noises we dared not laugh at, Faces we made when no one was looking. But he wishes us more than this.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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5a16a7f
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She was tuned in to a different station from most people and the tuning dial was broken.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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e41e280
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It is considerably more than that, though: it is an acceptance that in the face of meaninglessness or indifference it is still possible to be engaged in the world--it is still possible to love. These are the first two stanzas of this curious little poem: Looking up at the stars, I know quite well That, for all they care, I can go to hell, But on earth indifference is the least We have to dread from man or beast. How should we like it were s..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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2c3b660
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It was inconsiderate not to have a gardener if, like Dr Ranta, you were in a well-paid white-collar job. It was a social duty to employ domestic staff, who were readily available and desperate for work. Wages were low - unconscionably so, thought Mma Ramotswe - but at least the system created jobs. If everybody with a job had a maid, then that was food going into the mouths of the maids and their children. If everybody did their own housewo..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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ae3ce15
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he was sent off to boarding school. Gresham's School is in a small town called Holt, in Norfolk, a remote part of rural England. Unlike many boarding schools of the day, the regime in this school was reasonably liberal and did not involve the cruelties in which the English educational system of the time excelled. These could be profoundly distorting: how many lives were ruined by a harsh regime of relentless conformity, enforced by physical..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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0bb77db
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You can't do much about a personality disorder. Cats are psychopaths at heart.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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8285b91
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To be free Is often to be lonely. He would unite The unequal moieties fractured By our own well-meaning sense of justice Would restore to the larger the wit and will The smaller possess but can only use For arid disputes, would give back to The son the mother's richness of feeling ...
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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aea2d54
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Look at the way people try to make points of contact with others when they meet. Look at the way you instinctively try to establish whether somebody you meet for the first time knows somebody you know. Watch people do it. I'm from such and such place. Oh yes? So you know So-and-So? Yes! And So-and-So? No, I don't know her, but of course, there's So-and-So. That's how it works." "I suppose so. But why?" "Because we don't like impersonality. ..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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83c8750
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He agreed with David Hockney that an artist really had to be able to draw before anything else could be achieved.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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cc7f8bc
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This tea is for people who really appreciate tea. Ordinary tea is for anyone.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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681e2f0
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It was all very well occupying the moral high ground on electoral reform, but what really mattered, she thought, was how you treated your mother.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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fcbd47a
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There were three chairs on the verandah--comfortable old wooden chairs that probably dated from Protectorate days. "The British brought chairs," Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni once said. "They took chairs with them wherever they went in the world. And they left the chairs behind when they went home."
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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c15215d
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Problems have a way of solving themselves.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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ecaaab1
|
Do you think your dog might have been drunk when he bit these people, Mr Lordie?
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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59d7983
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her daddy, as she called him, and of whom she thought at some point every day, every single day, and whom she had loved with all her heart.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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973b397
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we don't see our parents as people. Your daddy was also a man--a very good man too--but he was a man.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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2d01d4c
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but then where would one end if one started to compose a list of the wrongs that this world had seen? Better perhaps, thought Mma Ramotswe, to make a list of those things that were right with the world, of people who had made life better for other people, or who had done what they had been called to do with honour and without complaint.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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d09a482
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She assigned the shirt a number and turned to the next prize. This was a set of six fish knives and forks, made by Hamilton and Inches, and a very handsome prize for somebody. This would be popular at a Conservative function, but would be useless at a Labour Party event. They had no idea, she believed, of the use of fish knives and forks and used the same cutlery for everything. That was part of the problem. The Liberal Democrats, of course..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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c6c93ff
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you did not look for a winner who would take everything; you found a way of allowing people to save face; you found a way of healing rather than imposing.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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8e1ee9d
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Animals, like people, did not ask to be who or what they were, and to make life difficult for others simply for being what they were seemed to her to be fundamentally unkind.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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9a1d41e
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Isabel's private theory of moral proximity, the basis of those obligations that came into existence when we found ourselves close enough to others to be able to witness or feel their needs, or when we were in some other way linked to their plight. We could not deal with all the suffering or need in the world, but we could--and should--deal with that sliver of suffering that was reasonably close to us.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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ddd78a9
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My old friend," he began, "is down below, his face we'll see no more, for what he thought was H2O was H2SO4"
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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7653ecb
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Because laughs never die away entirely," said Jamie. "At least, if you believe in Marconi."
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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c850a48
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People's lives are delicate; you cannot interfere with them without running the risk of changing them profoundly. A chance remark, a careless involvement, may make the difference between a life of happiness and one of sorrow.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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a5e4b2d
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Cattle had no vote, nor the words to express a view, but their feelings ranked above just about everything else in the country.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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0702ff5
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What I said to you was private. We can have private reservations about a person's work, but that doesn't mean to say that we have to spell those out to him. It's called tact, Isabel!
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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2ad3eba
|
Anybody in any employment in Botswana was expected to engage somebody to help in the house. There was nothing extravagant about this; it was, in fact, a form of sharing: if you had a job, you had money, and money needed to be spread around. The people who helped in the house were often paid a pittance and expected to work long hours, but they were desperate for any job and were pleased to take on what came their way.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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3e40ca3
|
MMA RAMOTSWE observed speed limits for two reasons. One of these was that she believed that laws were there to be obeyed, and that if everybody drove as fast as they liked there would be mayhem on the roads.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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c1b1af0
|
She could turn away and say that they had nothing to do with her, or she could accept that they had somehow touched her skirt. ...we all had a skirt, and those who touched our skirt became our concern.
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Alexander McCall Smith |