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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| cfd0bde | I have a feeling that we've seen the dismantling of civilisation, brick by brick, and now we're looking into the void. We thought that we were liberating people from oppressive cultural circumstances, but we were, in fact, taking something away from them. We were killing off civility and concern. We were undermining all those little ties of loyalty and consideration and affection that are necessary for human flourishing. We thought that tra.. | nationalism civilization society culture tradition | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| 64a9c6e | Those images of those old places, the places you come from, never completely disappear. They remain with you, those scraps of memory; those pictures somewhere in your mind of how things were, of what the sun looked like when it shone through the window of your childhood room and caught floating specks of dust in its rays; of how you looked up at the ceiling above your sleeping mat; of the faces of an aunt or a grandparent or a friend; of al.. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| ffec667 | Portraiture has its risks, and I suppose a dissident Free Presbyterian fatwa is one of them. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 30352e1 | If the lord came back today, [Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni] thought, he would probably be a mechanic, he reflected. That would be a great honour for mechanics everywhere. And there is no doubt but that e would choose Africa: Israel was far too dangerous these days. In fact, the more one thought about it, the more likely it was that he would choose Botswana, and Gabarone in particular. Now that would be a wonderful honour for the people of Botswana; .. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| d0e4db4 | Moral beauty existed as clearly as any other form of beauty and perhaps that was where we could find the God who was so vividly, and sometimes bizarrely, described in our noisy religious explanations. It was an intriguing thought, as it meant that a concert could be a spiritual experience, a secular painting a religious icon, a beguiling face a passing angel. | religion | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| 1c6b857 | Being loved and admired by a man like that--and she knew that this man, this mechanic, this fixer of machines with their broken hearts, did indeed love and admire her--was like walking in the sunshine; it gave the same feeling of warmth and pleasure to bask in the love of one who has promised it, publicly at a wedding ceremony, and who is constant in his promise that such love will be given for the rest of his days. What more could any woma.. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 7ffb5ed | She remembered love, though, and a feeling of warmth. It was like remembering light, or the glow that sometimes persists after a light has gone out. | mccall modern-retelling jane-austen love-quotes love smith emma metaphors | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| 070e74d | Go to any small village anywhere in the world, and see what they remember. Everything. It's all there -- passed on like a precious piece of information, some secret imparted from one who knew to one who yearns to know. Taken good care of. | wisdom | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| 3ee6e94 | To be able to imagine the ohter, and the experience of the other was what wisdome was all about; but nobody talked about wisdom very much anymore, nor virtue perhaps because wisdom was nto appreciated in a world of glitz and effect. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 16e6d51 | There are some very inventive adults, Mma. When you listen to them, you have to divide everything they say by two, and then take away ten. As you have to do with some politicians. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| e202d39 | Teachers were not allowed to beat children as they did in the past, although, Mma Ramotswe reflected, there were some boys-and indeed some young men-who might have been greatly improved by moderate physical correction. The apprentices, for example: would it help if Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni resorted to physical chastisement-nothing severe, of course-but just an occasional kick in the seat of the pants while they were bending over to change a tyre.. | bottom women humor blow kick | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| 5cc65f5 | Charming people, when not actively shooting one another," a friend had once said, which was so unkind, but, like so many unkind comments, had a grain of truth in it. They shoot one another and had been doing so for centuries. They did bicker over and brood on long-dead history--or history that should be long dead. The problem with history was that it refused to lie down and die." | long-dead-history grudges | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| 8dd9d90 | those who crept about at night risked stepping on a snake if they were not careful, as snakes move out of our way only if they feel vibrations in the ground. A light person--a person of non-traditional build, for example--was at far greater risk of being bitten by a snake for that very reason. That was another argument, of course, for maintaining traditional build--consideration for snakes, and safety too. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| a9e0f01 | I am just saying that we have to have some things that we like, otherwise we shall be very unhappy. And if you are very unhappy you can die - we all know that. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| b22c8e9 | Inside every one of us, thought Mma Ramotswe, there is the child we once were, the child that was unsure about the world and our place in it. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 002cb15 | Telling a person with toothache that there are others with greater toothache than their own was no help at all. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| bd8ca91 | Anybody can lose,' cautioned Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. 'You need to remember that every time you win. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 26a9d5a | 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. | asking-for-forgiveness forgiving-others forgiving-yourself forgiveness-quotes forgiving forgiveness | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| fbad83e | 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. | mothers lawyers | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| e7eac6a | 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. | swedish ideals tolerance | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| 268d0bc | 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 .. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 1eafa16 | 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. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 4145b2d | 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.. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 1bafccd | The romance of your child's childhood may be the last romance you can give up. | Adam Gopnik | ||
| 6f18a0d | I remember looking out the window of the little maid's room where we had been installed, seeing the lights of the Palisades across the way, and thinking, There! There it is! There's New York, this wonderful city, I'll go live there someday. Even being in New York, the actual place, I found the idea of New York so wonderful that I could only imagine it as some other place, greater than any place that would let me sleep in it--a distant const.. | Adam Gopnik | ||
| ed133ef | Ever since, New York has existed for me simultaneously as a map to be learned and a place to aspire too--a city of things and a city of signs, the place I actually am and the place I would like to be even when I am here. As a kid, I grasped that the skyline was a sign that could be, so to speak, relocated to New Jersey--a kind of abstract, receding Vision whose meaning would always be "out of reach," not a concrete thing signifying "here yo.. | Adam Gopnik | ||
| d9f7328 | we swim in our second language, we breathe in our first | Adam Gopnik | ||
| 31690c2 | Can't repeat the past? We do it every day. We build a life, or try to, of pleasures and duties that will become routine, so that every day will be the same day, or nearly so, "the day of our life," Randall Jarrell called it." | Adam Gopnik | ||
| 592543f | Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." This touches on the heart of the argumentum ad populum fallacy. Physical reality does not require belief to sustain it, and belief will not modify the rules of the universe." -- | philip-k-dick reality | Armin Navabi | |
| ca87628 | I even gave up, for a while, stopping by the window of the room to look out at the lights and deep, illuminated streets. That's a form of dying, that losing contact with the city like that. | perdido-street-station | Philip K. Dick | |
| e13eb03 | There is no Pris," he said. "Only Rachael Rosen, over and over again." | Philip K. Dick | ||
| a836b02 | Eierkopf. Egghead. Because the big double-domed empty heads break so easily . . . in the street brawls. | nerd | Philip K. Dick | |
| 34f59db | The termination of a relationship," he said, "is not a misunderstanding. It's a reorganization of life." | Philip K. Dick | ||
| d0f4868 | A lot can be said for the infinite mercies of God, but the smarts of a good pharmacist, when you get down to it, is worth more. | Philip K. Dick | ||
| bc2070f | Maybe I'll just sit here parked for a while, he decided, and alpha meditate or go into various different altered states of consciousness. | Philip K. Dick | ||
| e860202 | Dr. Leon Stone turned out to be one of the most important people in Horselover Fat's life. To get to Stone, Fat had to nearly kill himself physically, matching his mental death. Is this what they mean about God's mysterious ways? How else could Fat have linked up with Leon Stone? Only some dismal act of the order of a suicide attempt, a truly lethal attempt, would have achieved it; Fat had to die, or nearly die, to be cured. Or nearly cured.. | Philip K. Dick | ||
| 0d2a5cd | The first thing that went wrong, according to Fat, had to do with the radio. Listening to it one night- he had not been able to sleep for a long time- he heard the radio saying hideous words, sentences which it could not be saying. Beth, being asleep, missed that. So that could have been Fat's mind breaking down; by then his psyche was disintegrating at a terrible velocity. Mental illness is not funny. | Philip K. Dick | ||
| 3bca617 | A Gresham's Law: the fakes would undermine the value of the real. | Philip K. Dick | ||
| 7d6c30d | We should take mothers in high seas and drown them there, they are as poisonous as lead in the air. | Philip K. Dick | ||
| 8b4caf3 | Her smile increased. She had perfect white regular teeth; Irish, Juliana decided. Only Irish blood could give that jawline such femininity. | feminity white perfect irish | Philip K. Dick | |
| 1598c50 | But the longing within him had grown even greater, the overpowering need to be alone. Locked in an empty room, entirely unwitnessed, silent and supine. Stretched out, not needing to speak, not needing to move. Not required to cope with anyone or any problem. And no one will even know where I am, he told himself. That seemed, unaccountably, very important; he wanted to be unknown and invisible, to live unseen. | Philip K. Dick | ||
| 70f90af | The distinction between sanity and insanity is narrower than the razor's edge, sharper than a hound's tooth, more agile than a mule deer. It is more elusive than the merest phantom. Perhaps it does not even exist; perhaps it is a phantom. | Philip K. Dick | ||
| b28ff00 | She sighed. "Oh, God, to be in the flyship cruising through the void. That's what I long for: an infinite void. With no human voices, no human smells, no human jaws masticating plastic chewing gum in nine iridescent colors." -- | Philip K. Dick | ||
| bc5d6da | The time, then, had come for him to poison himself so that an economic monopoly could be kept alive, a sprawling, interplan empire from which he now derived nothing. | Philip K. Dick |