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fd0f908
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The ordinary people of Africa tended not to have room in their hearts for hatred. They were sometimes foolish, like people anywhere, but they did not bear grudges, as Mr Mandela had shown the world.
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humanity
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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602fbe8
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especially when it came to his triumphant denunciations of his political enemies, each of whom, she suspected, were only too relieved that it was him rather than they who had been caught. She
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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175aac2
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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.
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philosophical
right-and-wrong
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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6140287
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People with something to hide wore sunglasses indoors. They were the ones you had to watch very carefully.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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da8208c
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Very..." She left the word hanging. Very unfinished, thought Isabel. The woman finished her sentence. "Very beautiful." Oh, really! thought Isabel. The verdict from others was much the same. Oh well, thought Isabel. Perhaps I'm not sufficiently used to the language he's using. Music is not an international language, she thought, no matter how frequently that claim is made; some words of the language may be the same, but not all, and one nee..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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92602b4
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You can lose a piece of plain bread and not think twice about it, but when you lose one spread thickly with strawberry jam it's an altogether more serious matter.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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44bcbfd
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But just because somebody has lots of sweets does not mean that he has stolen them. One thing, you see, does not always lead to another.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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5c6e39d
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Although she had only started being a detective, Precious was well aware that you had to be able to show people something if you wanted them to believe it.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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706ed01
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By comparison with such lives, our days were inconsequential indeed, and yet even though our canvas was small, still we could paint a masterpiece--as long as we were content for it to be a miniature.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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9ff0ab5
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suddenly realised that if he felt that he had achieved nothing it was because he had failed to cherish what he had in fact done. He had filled his days doing ordinary, unexceptional things and thought nothing of them. But they were far from nothing:
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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6865898
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On the wall of this yard there was the wording, painted in high letters: Reliable Autos. We get you there. "Get you where?" asked Fanwell. Chobie smiled. "Where you want to get. That's where everybody's heading, after all. To where they want to get."
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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10bb429
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The sound of the kettle boiling was in itself the sound of normality, of reason, the sound of a fight back against the sadness of things.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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38c9015
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Do not take on a traditionally built person unless you are prepared for a heavyweight bout.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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a6bd855
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Some genealogies claimed to be able to trace the Maclean ancestry even further back, going as far as Julius Caesar, and, in some cases, admittedly more tendentiously, to the ancient Celtic god of the sun.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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5f81308
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It was hard to disappear completely in Botswana, where there were fewer than two million people and where people had a healthy curiosity as to who was who and where people had come from. It was very difficult to be anonymous, even in Gaborone, as there would always be neighbours who would want to know exactly what one was doing and who one's people had been.
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neighbors
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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a4aa3bc
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The shoes themselves were light green, with lowish heels (which were very important for comfort and walking; high heels were always a temptation, but, like all temptations, one paid for them later).
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temptation
shoes
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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bc462ba
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She believed in getting as much use as possible from everything, and thought that as long as machinery, or anything else, could be cajoled into operation, it should be kept; to do otherwise, she thought, was wasteful.
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reuse
repair
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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4b36f84
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The recipe for each child is just for that child, even if it is the same mother and father.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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6c6668f
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Because sometimes in this life we're given things that we don't deserve - that we haven't done anything to merit, so to speak. We don't have to give those up if they come our way. And remember this: plenty of people are better off than you. Inequality is written into the way the world works, no matter how hard we try to correct it." Miss Hardy paused. "You may be fortunate in one respect and less fortunate in another. Nobody's guaranteed ha..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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2cba1ec
|
Maybe not," mused Maggie. "If we eat pies, then we should never, not for one moment, look down on the making of them." "I don't," said William."
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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3257c82
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The forges of friendship, thought Angus, may be busy ones, but their dorrs are always open.
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friendship
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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17e72a3
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There are awkward moments from which one can retreat, and awkward moments from which there is no escape.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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dc82d50
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Von Igelfeld was not sure. He remembered reading that Hume believed that our minds vibrated in sympathy, and that this ability - to vibrate in unison with one another - was the origin of the ethical impulse. And Schopenhauer's moral theory was about feeling, was it not; so perhaps they were one and the same phenomenon.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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c0283c9
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they were two people thrown together on a journey, who found themselves sharing the same railway compartment and becoming resigned to each other's company.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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9c4666e
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there is something there--some force, or truth, perhaps--to put it at its most general. I sense it, and I suppose I'd even go so far as to say that I yearn for it. I want it to be. Maybe that's God. But I find it difficult to accept any statement as to his identity. And as for claims to be the sole interpreter of that force--the sort of claim made by religions that tell you that they have the sole answer--well, what can one say about such a..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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8712218
|
When she had lived in Bobonong the houses seemed perfectly normal to her and the house in which her family lived had seemed quite comfortable. But looking at it with eyes that had seen Gaborone, and the large buildings there, their house had seemed mean and cramped.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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850a0d0
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None of us, she thought, wants the world we know to come to an end; we do not want familiar things to be taken from us.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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24eb815
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unconscionable-eating the food in a supermarket was simply theft, and could be distinguished from shoplifting only by virtue of the nature of the container used to remove the property.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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6fd7128
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This was loyalty of a sort which was rare in an age of self-indulgence. It was an old-fashioned virtue of the type which her philosophical colleagues extolled but could never themselves match.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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14db1f2
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He could not imagine being interested in that way in somebody like Mma Mateleke; how would one ever get to plant a kiss on such a person if she was always talking? It would be difficult to get one's lips into contact with a mouth that was always opening and shutting to form words; that would surely be very distracting for a man, he thought, and might even discourage him to the point of disinclination, if that was the right word.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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09b1ac4
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substitute for those friendships of childhood that survive into adult years. Those are the ones in which we are bound to one
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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e39149f
|
How do you calibrate pain?" asked Jamie. "By cutting out the background pain of the world," answered Isabel. "By cutting all that out, not registering it, and responding only to those painful things that we can do something about. Because otherwise ..."
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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bd8c03e
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You can't deceive your own mother. That's the one person, the only one, to whom you will always be transparent.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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7dd9487
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To dispatch one's friends to a dictionary from time to time is one of the more sophisticated pleasures of life, but it is one that must be indulged in sparingly: to do it too often may result in accusations of having swallowed one's own dictionary, which is not a compliment whichever way one looks at it.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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677cbc5
|
if you had no language, then what form did your thoughts take--if you thought at all? Of course you thought--she had never had any difficulty with accepting that--but how limited would your thoughts be in the absence of any words to express them?
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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6e67fd5
|
Self-doubt was a luxury, as, perhaps, was the examined life. And yet the examined life, as the adage had it, was the only life worth living.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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8493282
|
Psychology, she thought; that is what they called it these days, but in her view it was something much older than that. It was woman's knowledge, that was what it was; knowledge of how men behaved and how they could be persuaded to do something if one approached the matter in the right way.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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8ce1cdc
|
She knew that for many people this was their greatest ambition: to have a partner and a child, to live the domestic life, but she had never thought it would be enough for her. Yet it was.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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59bad1b
|
It was a stark choice: shoes or food; beauty or sustenance; the sensible or the self-indulgent. "I'll take the shoes," she said firmly." --
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shoes
shopping
guilt
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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367041c
|
You can only wear one pair of shoes at a time," she said. "Rich people are like the rest of us--two feet, ten toes. We are all the same that way."
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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4ae4931
|
It's easy to be foolish... It's dead simple, really. All you have to be is human and to allow yourself to do the human things, like fall in love with somebody when you know that there's no point and when you know, too, that it's just going to make you unhappy. It's better to be stoic - to be one of those people who manage to keep themselves to themselves, who manage to avoid letting go and becoming entangled in something that they know from..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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586f26a
|
And then there is the poet Kenneth Koch, who while travelling in Kenya came to a railroad crossing at which this sign was posted: One train may hide another. This was meant, of course, as a warning to drivers of the fact that the train you see may not be the only train to reckon with, but it also meant, as Koch points out in his poem, that there are many things in this life that conceal other things. One letter may mean another is on the wa..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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922bca3
|
wrong to think the less of another for what he or she was. There was no moral obligation to others, nor necessarily to enthuse over them, but we did have to recognize their equal worth.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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f11bce9
|
Manfred's interventions, he thought, had all the characteristics of radio jamming, designed to stop anybody else talking.
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Alexander McCall Smith |