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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 6a01a95 | That place is the place we have always been, and if you think that where you have been is where you should be, then why go to another place that you do not know at all and may not be as good as the place you were in before somebody came along and said to you that you must go forwards--which is not what you wanted to do? | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| fe21e66 | And it was young men in red cars who were the most dangerous of all. Such people were best given a wide berth, both in and out of the car. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 7b81844 | good things that we have in life are on temporary loan, at best, and can be taken away from us in an instant. The borderline between good fortune and disaster, between plenitude and paucity, between the warm hearth of love and the cold chamber of loneliness, was a narrow one. We could cross over from one to the other at any moment, as when we stumbled or fell, or simply walked over to the other side because we were paying insufficient atten.. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| de58863 | The queue for happiness was not well ordered, he thought; it stretched out and wound round corners, and sometimes, it seemed, the end was so hard to see. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| e7e4d7c | There are old mycologists and there are bold mycologists, but there are no old, bold mycologists. | mycologists | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| f7238dd | There were plenty of people who did not really believe in God, but who wanted to believe in him, and said that they did. Some people said that these people were foolish, that they were hypocritical, but Mma Ramotswe was not so sure about that. If something, or somebody, could help you to get through life, to lead a life that was good and purposeful, did it matter all that much if that thing or that person did not exist? She thought it did n.. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 369a904 | there was always a part of the human mind that was prepared to entertain such notions, particularly at night, in the world of shadows, when there were sounds that one could not understand and when each one of us was in some sense alone. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 7d0ae97 | And the difference was this, she mused: those who are twenty don't know what it is like to be forty, whereas those who are forty know what it is like to be twenty. It was a bit like discussing a foreign country with somebody who has never been there. They are prepared to listen, but it's not quite real for them. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| e87dbfc | That is the problem with governments these days. They want to do things all the time; they are always very busy thinking of what things they can do next. That is not what people want. People want to be left alone to look after their cattle. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 831d89c | What is beauty, she thought, but the promise of happiness, as Stendhal said it was? | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| b01e6e4 | Some people cannot bear news like that. They think they must live forever, and they cry and wail when they realise that their time is coming. I do not feel that, and I did not weep at that news which the doctor gave me. The only thing that makes me sad is that I shall be leaving Africa when I die. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| f91ab91 | Whisky nosers, as they called themselves, eschewed what they saw as the pretentiousness of wine vocabulary. While oenophiles resorted to recondite adjectives, whisky nosers spoke the language of everyday life, detecting hints of stale seaweed, or even diesel fuel. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 1aa9436 | it was difficult to think what to do, and, as she often did in such circumstances, Mma Ramotswe decided that the best thing to do would be to go shopping. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| df42973 | You haven't offended me at all. You've made me think. That's all. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| b38c4fd | But we cannot always choose whose lives will become entangled with our own; these things happen to us, come to us uninvited, and Mma Ramotswe understood that well. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 015de01 | Perhaps trust had to be accompanied by a measure of common sense, and a hefty dose of realism about human nature. But that would need a lot of thinking about, and the tea break did not go on forever. | thinking trust | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| 1fa0fd6 | Writers just play out their fantasies in their books. They are often very unstable, tricky people, Bertie. Writers are usually very bad at real life and feel that they have to create imaginary lives to make up for it. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 78b6663 | Lions walk on four legs," observed Mma Makutsi. "Was this man walking on four legs? That can be a big giveaway, Mma." | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 0aa721a | All cats are grey in the dark, he had written in one chapter. So remember that how much you can see of a situation depends on how much light you can shine upon it. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 25224fd | She stopped. 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. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| d1e6182 | Why? Why is there a crisis in literature? Because of lies and rottenness. Simplicity and sincerity have been replaced by obsfucation and pretense. Men, of course. They love to create mystery where none exists. It's the way they think. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 02ea592 | Blocks of flats could change everything, thought Mma Ramotswe. They were designed for people, but people were not necessarily designed for them. These flats at the edges of the Village, though, were made more human by the washing that was hung out to dry from their balconies; by the children who congregated in their doorways, or played with skipping ropes and dogs on their pathways; by the music that the residents listened to, melodies that.. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 159a7b7 | Chapter Eleven She did not spend long in the supermarket at Riverwalk, confining her purchases to supplies she would need for the next few days. There was beef for stew, a large pumpkin, a packet of beans, a dozen eggs, and two loaves of bread. The pumpkin looked delicious--almost perfectly round and deep yellow in colour, it sat on the passenger seat beside her so comfortably as she drove out of the car park, so pleased to be what it was, .. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 6354e7d | we must love those with whom we live and work, and love them for all their failings, manifest and manifold though they be. | failings humanity love | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| 5ea7c1e | But shall we inspect what we see beyond?" he went on. "Please, after you..." Elspeth thought: I am so fortunate. I am married to a man who says "Please, after you." How fortunate is that? And she thought of a friend who did not even have a husband, although she dearly would have loved one, and how her life would be transformed, would be made perfect, if she had one who said, "Please, after you" or indeed by one who did not even say that, wh.. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| faf2f1d | Human history seems to me to be one long story of people sweeping down--or up, I suppose--replacing other people in the process. | history history-of-mankind history-repeating-itself human-history | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| 54e95ce | She was, he reflected, one of his closest friends, in a rather curious, slightly old-fashioned way. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 170ba07 | Stand on your toe. That is what one said in Setswana if one hoped that something would happen. It was the same as the expression which white people used: cross your fingers. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| cf77c4d | People don't talk about mercy very much these days--it has a rather old-fashioned ring to it. but it exists and its power is quite extraordinary | mercy power | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| 5bc2cd5 | If you knew what is was like to be another person, then how could you possibly do something which would cause pain? The problem, though, was that there seemed to be people in whom that imaginative part was just missing. It could be that they were born that way--with something missing from their brains--or it could be that they became like that because they were never taught by their parents to sympathise with others. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 7ff0cd0 | Of course you could not allow yourself to think too much about these issues. One had to get on and to attend to the day-to-day business of living. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 384490e | Like ageism and sexism, lookism was everywhere, resulting in the good-looking getting the best jobs, winning all the plaudits, being let off the most parking tickets by soft-hearted traffic wardens; being generally favoured. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| b5e2b37 | It was a pink sort of smell- a smell that seemed to get bigger as you smelled it and then burst, just like the popping of a bubble | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 73fde13 | There was a great deal of progress being made, right under their noses, particularly in Africa, and this progress was good. Life was much harder for tyrants than it had been before. | alexander-mccall-smith life progress tyrants | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| 1847f6a | Words that are full of hurt sometimes need to be left in the air where they have been spoken. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 6736eb3 | We were tiny creatures, really; tiny and afraid, trying to hold our place on the little platform that was our earth. So while the world about us might seem so solid, so permanent, it was not really. We were all at the mercy of chance, no matter how confident we felt, hostages to our own human frailty. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| e6832d4 | the problem with governments these days. They want to do things all the time; they are always very busy thinking of what things they can do next. That is not what people want. People want to be left alone to look after their cattle. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| a3af56c | We do not talk about wise men or wise ladies any more, she reflected; their place had been taken, it seemed, by all sorts of shallow people--actors and the like--who were only too ready to pronounce on all sorts of subjects. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| a7b64ef | There are so many things we take in subconsciously and are unaware we ever saw. There is plenty of lumber like that in our minds. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 9507b2c | Crisis. It was a time of sustained anxiety for anybody who read a newspaper or listened to the news on the radio, and that included his mother, Mrs. Florence Woodhouse, who was anxious at the best of times and even more so at the worst. What was the point of continuing the human race when nuclear self-immolation seemed to be such a real and imminent possibility? That was the question that occurred to Florence as she was admitted to the deli.. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 201d491 | As a child she had believed that wrongs would always be righted, that somehow the world would not let the innocent suffer, but now she realised that this was not true. Old oppressors were replaced by new ones, from another distant place or from right next door. Old lies were replaced by new ones, backed up by old threats. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| f71bf78 | It is very difficult sometimes to keep upright. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| eaa5e10 | Yes. Look at the way in which a little boy plays. He prods. He investigates things all around him. He moves them. He tries to push them over. Then look at girls. They touch things gently. They watch them. They don't try to push them about. They..." She searched for the right word. "They cherish them." The" | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 7a71081 | It is not at all foolish to hope for miracles, | Alexander McCall Smith |