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002cb15
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Telling a person with toothache that there are others with greater toothache than their own was no help at all.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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bd8ca91
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Anybody can lose,' cautioned Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. 'You need to remember that every time you win.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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26a9d5a
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Can you forgive her? Can you do that? There was no response. Because if you can start to forgive, then it will become easier. And? And then you will be able to forgive yourself--and ask others to forgive you.
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asking-for-forgiveness
forgiveness
forgiveness-quotes
forgiving
forgiving-others
forgiving-yourself
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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fbad83e
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All suspects should be given the chance to telephone their lawyers or their mothers, and it would not be surprising if they chose to call their mothers. After all, your mother is fall more likely to believe in your innocence than your lawyer.
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lawyers
mothers
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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e7eac6a
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Sometimes it was difficult to be as tolerant as he wanted to be; but then, thought Ulf, the whole point about high ideals is that they are high. Being Swedish was not always easy, but you had to do your best, and hope that you didn't slip, and become... well, Mediterranean in outlook.
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ideals
swedish
tolerance
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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268d0bc
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it evokes so powerfully what we all must have felt as children--the conviction that things are better elsewhere if only we could get there. The powerlessness of the child is what makes that so poignant: children are trapped in the world created for them by adults, and for most children the possibility of escape is remote. The same idea is present in the Freud poem, where he talks about the child ... unlucky in his little State, some hearth ..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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1eafa16
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nobody dared in those days to question such bullies, and the freedom that is more normal these days has come too late for these victims. Auden would have helped, because the whole message of his life and his poetry is the antithesis of cruelty and meanness of spirit.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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4145b2d
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And then I awoke, and just as Auden did when he awoke from his dream of the croquet match, I felt that I had been vouchsafed a vision. It was a feeling of utter elation and goodwill--in other words, a feeling of agape. I felt bathed in the warm, golden glow of this feeling. Some year later my wife and I were having dinner with psychiatrist friends in an Edinburgh restaurant. The talk turned to dreams, and I recounted my dream. Unfortunately..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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197e159
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We are human and vulnerable, whatever our individual situation: The moon looks on them all The Healers and the brilliant talkers The eccentrics and the silent walkers The dumpy and the tall.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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21e44c7
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How many of us are happy to be exactly where we are at any moment?
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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206fa9d
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Lists, she thought, are the stories of our lives; they give a picture of who we are and what we do every day. The
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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b3e5f04
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If we were all responsible for the misdeeds of the governments that represent us, thought Isabel, then the moral burden would be just too great.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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90fefab
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Forgiveness was never easy, but Mma Ramotswe believed in it because she knew that without forgiveness we cluttered our lives with old business.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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ce9d125
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A change of oil...yes, that was what we all needed from time to time, whether we were an engine or a person. And there were other similarities to be explored. Engines had to be handled gently, as did people. Forward gears were better than reverse gears--for people as well as engines.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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0533440
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She had, Emma decided, a very particular beauty about her, a quality that required more than the possession of conventionally attractive features. Good looks could be a cliche, which meant that those who satisfied the normal criteria of beauty could fail its more subtle tests. Thus it was that those with very regular features could just miss being beautiful because they lacked some tiny human imperfection, some irregularity that imparted to..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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696bc70
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The mention of God made Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni frown. In his experience, people were always claiming that God agreed with them even when there was little or no evidence that this was the case.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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71f5d63
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And now, sitting in the van with Charlie, who was looking ahead of them and not really paying much attention to where they currently were, she reflected on the possibility that young men were a completely alien breed, and that however much you tried to get them to see things the way you saw them, you were destined to fail. And that perhaps part of the secret of leading a life in which you would not always be worrying about things, or compla..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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2c3431d
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To use strong language, she thought, was a sign of bad temper and lack of concern for others. Such people were not clever or bold simply because they used such language; each time they opened their mouths they proclaimed I am a person who is poor in words.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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77996ae
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The Americans were very clever; they sent rockets into space and invented machines which could think more quickly than any human being alive, but all this cleverness could also make them blind. They did not understand other people. They thought that everyone looked at things in the same way as Americans did, but they were wrong. Science was only part of the truth. There were also many other things that made the world what it was, and the Am..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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5d0d0e7
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So what is this love that comes with being married?" ... "Being fond of somebody? Being nice? Wanting them not to go away? ... the line struck me with its poetic force. I didn't want you to go away... It was certainly powerful, and perhaps it was as good a definition of love as any other."
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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32a9207
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She had always believed that people who were nasty or unkind to others were only like that because there was something wrong in their lives, and that people who had something wrong in their lives were not to be despised or hated, but were to be pitied. So
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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e96d7dd
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I cannot see myself in a new car. I am a tiny white van person. That is what i want!
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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2f7f3b2
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Shall I make you a cup of tea? He asked. It was the classic response to crisis practiced throughout these islands--in England, Scotland, and elsewhere. Emotional turmoil, danger, even disaster could be faced with far greater equanimity if the kettle was switched on. War has been declared! There's been a major earthquake! The stock market has collapsed! Oh really? Let me put the kettle on....
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crises
crises-solution
crisis
tea
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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4727ed5
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It was, he thought, his gesture against the whole pro-euthanasia movement that talked so glibly of choice without realising the fire with which one played when tinkering with fragile taboos against killing others. Yes, he thought, Mrs Bates's life did not seem to amount to much, but to her it was all she had.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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cc7891e
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To be cut down to size is good for all of us, but particularly so for those who forget how transient are our cultures and institutions, how pointless and cruel our divisions, how vain our claims to special status for our practices and beliefs above those of others.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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8e2f94f
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People talk of the wrench of parting, and that, he felt, was exactly what it was. Take a metal object off a magnet and one would experience that - there was the draw, the tug, the flow of the bond even through the air, and then the sudden detaching as separation occurred. That was what it was like. That was human parting. You felt it; you felt the separation, just as you would feel the rending of tissue being pulled apart.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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f0d7aba
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And she lowered her eyes at the gentle reproach, for she had learned her lesson, even if there would be occasional, but only very occasional, relapses; for none of us is perfect, except, of course, the ones we love, the things of home, our much appreciated dogs and cats, our favourites of one sort or another.
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romance
shadow-rider-series
suspense
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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205f428
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Artists were allowed to do that - to look, to gaze at others and try to find out what it was that they were feeling - but we, who were not artists, were not. If one looked too hard that would be considered voyeurism, or nosienss, which is what Cat, her neice, had accused her of more than once. Jamie - the boyfriend rejected by Cat but kept on by Isabel as a friend - had done the same althought more tactfully. He had said that she needed to ..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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9e2391a
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Bertie stared at his mother. She spoils things, he thought. All she ever does is spoil things. He had not started this conversation, and it was not his fault that they were now talking about Grey Owl. He sounded rather a nice man to Bertie. Any why should he not dress up in feathers and live in the forests if that was what he wanted to do? It was typical of his mother to try to spoil Grey Owl's fun.
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mothers
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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4063491
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Mma Ramotswe did not like lying, but sometimes it was necessary, particularly when faced with people who were promoted beyond their talents.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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7bbb915
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Saying sorry does not make you look small--it makes you look big.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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0720f83
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None of us is immune to shipwreck. Come, beckons the fatal shore: come and die on my white sands, it said. And we do.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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7389b6e
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I'd like to be tidy, said Hen, I try, but I guess you can't be what you aren't.
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tidy
what-you-are
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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b16741b
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It was easy, terribly easy, to become with time a middle-aged spinster with a sharp tongue. She would have to guard against this.
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middle-age
sharp-tongue
spinster
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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7ccdb54
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It was always the best way of finding out information; just go and ask a woman who keeps her eyes and ears open and who likes to talk. It always worked. It was no use asking men; they simply were not interested enough in other people and the ordinary doings of people. That is why the real historians of Africa had always been the grandmothers, who remembered the lineage and the stories that went with it.
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gossip
historians
storytelling
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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67b7021
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If we let the men talk about them and decide them, then suddenly we wake up and find out that the men have made all the decisions, and these decisions all suit men.
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men
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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c71d2d3
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Boys and men are the same people, in different clothes. Boys wear short trousers and men wear long trousers. But they are just the same if you take their trousers off.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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9214da1
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Ako chovek, izchakvaiki v neshcho kato predverie momenta na svoeto razhdane, mozheshe da si izbere natsionalnostta, ne bi li bilo dosta izkusitelno da poiskash da se rodish kato italianets?
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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494b048
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It was a good place to sit, and listen, under a sky that had seen so much and heard so much that one more wicked deed would surely make no difference. Sins, thought Mma Ramotswe, are darker and more powerful when contemplated within confining walls. Out in the open, under such a sky as this, misdeeds were reduced to their natural proportions -- small, mean things that could be faced quite openly, sorted, and folded away.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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ca18450
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Antonia was very conscious of the corrosive power of envy and felt that it was this emotion, more than any other, which lay behind human unhappiness. People did not realise how widespread envy was.
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envy
unhappiness
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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c09a4e2
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Will you be my friend?" Bertie asked. And then added: "Just for Paris. You don't have to be my friend forever - just for Paris."
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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661f47a
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She had noticed that there was a tendency on the part of some Americans to believe that everybody, deep inside, wanted to live in America, and that it was inexplicable that people who could do so did not.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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1fd1411
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Absurdly, irrationally, she believed that music could make a difference to the temper of the world.She did not investigate this belief, test it to see whether it made sense;she simply believed it, and so she chose music that expressed order and healing:Bach for order, Mozart for healing.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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00cddc9
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Mma Makutsi pondered this. "Why are there fewer and fewer gentlemen, Mma Ramotswe?" "It is our fault, Mma. It is the fault of ladies." "Why is that?" "Because we have allowed men to stop behaving as gentlemen, and when you allow people to do what they wish, then that is what they do. They stop doing the things they need to do." She looked at Mma Makutsi across the steering wheel. "That is well known, I think, Mma. That is well known."
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Alexander McCall Smith |