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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 1858578 | The winds must come from somewhere when they blow...There must be reasons why the leaves decay. (From Auden's "If I Could Tell You" | leaves wind winds | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| 2950fa3 | she imagined what it would be like to live with somebody who had secrets. Instead of a comfortable atmosphere of trust there would be a nagging insecurity, like a corrosive crust, eating away at the fabric of the marriage. Doubts would spread like weeds, making it impossible to relax, spoiling everything. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| d80bcce | Pat wondered what inspiration an artist might find in the attempts of twenty-first-century architects to impose their phallic triumphs on the cityscape. Had any artist ever painted a contemporary glass block, for instance, or any other product of architectural brutalism that had laid its crude hands here and there upon the city?...If a building did not lend itself to being painted, then surely that must be because it was inherently ugly, wh.. | architecture contemporary-architecture contemporary-art edinburgh | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| be2e9c0 | They are a bit small for me, Mma," she confessed. "I think you were right. But I felt great happiness when I wore them, and I shall always remember that. They are such beautiful shoes." Mma Ramotswe laughed. "Well, that's the important thing, isn't it, Mma? To feel happiness, and then to remember it." "I think that you're right," said Mma Makutsi. Happiness was an elusive thing. It had something to do with having beautiful shoes, sometimes;.. | happiness shoes | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| dfe5189 | When Emma was five, Mrs. Woodhouse died. Emma did not remember her mother. 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. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 1671a2c | I suppose that's the way affairs come to an end. Somebody grabs a fork and stabs the other in the hand. And that's it | heartbreak love | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| efc7e8c | In such a way is freedom of thought lost... By small cuts. By small acts of disapproval. By a thousand discouragements of spirit. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| b6e56f6 | If you punish somebody harshly, she said, then you are simply inflicting more pain on the world. You are also punishing not only that person, but his family and the people who love him. You are punishing yourself, really, because we are all brothers and sisters in this world, whether we know it or not; we are all citizens of the same village. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| facc375 | French philosophers had been able to admire Mao and his works because they did not have to live in China at the time. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 64f29ae | When somebody does wrong, Emma, we must remember that that person is still a human being like the rest of us. We must not rush to throw the first stone. We must remind ourselves that all of us do wrong from time to time, unless we're saints, which we aren't. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| b0361a9 | It was not edifying to dwell on the failings of others. | edification edifying failings | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| 699e01d | Mma Ramoswe shaded her eyes with a hand. "All that work," she mused. "And now this." Mma Potsane shrugged her shoulders. "But that is always true, Mma," she said. "Even Gaborone. Look at all those buildings. How do we know that Gaborone will still be there in fifty years' time? Have the ants not got their plans for Gaborone as well?" Mma Ramotswe smiled. It was a good way of putting it. All our human endeavors are like that, she reflected, .. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 99e9d7e | We were all people--men and women--and you could never say that one group of people was less important than another. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 847715c | Places had echoes- and if one were sensitive, one might just pick up some resonance from the past, some feeling for what had happened. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 9e57637 | The night is a very bad time for questions to which there are no answers." Mr Badule looked at her. "You are very right, my sister. There is" | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 3acfb69 | Late people do not altogether leave us, she thought; they are still with us in memories such as that, wherever we are, no matter what time of day it was or how we were feeling, they were there, still shining the light of their love upon us. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 670d8de | We forget, she thought. We think that we were always the way we are now, but we were not. -- | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| db43c81 | The whole point about childhood," Domenica went on, "is that it affords us a brief moment of innocence and protection from the pressures of the world. Parents who push their children too hard intrude on that little bit of space." | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| d1cff2e | It is such an easy thing to do--to touch another in sympathy--but it is such a hard thing too. | sympathy | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| 0939ccb | 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... | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 63ac92a | this was a consequence of increasing prosperity, which, curiously enough, just seemed to bring out greed and selfishness. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| f30b013 | 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. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 59def9e | 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." | flirting | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| 2195221 | Life happens, she thought; whatever we do, life just happens. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 490ae80 | 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. | life regret | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| 5c79c6e | 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. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| bfcedf7 | bureaucracy was very rarely an obstruction, provided that one applied to it the insights of ordinary, everyday psychology | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 758533a | 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. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| f5a902d | 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. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| e08b440 | That young man will go far, she said. I don't know in what direction, but he will go far. | direction life | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| e90a1ca | 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. | boys laundry men messiness | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| a511da9 | 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." | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| d209f38 | 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." | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 9ac2e1f | 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. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| f563392 | 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. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 5a16a7f | She was tuned in to a different station from most people and the tuning dial was broken. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| e41e280 | 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.. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 2c3b660 | 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.. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| ae3ce15 | 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.. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 0bb77db | You can't do much about a personality disorder. Cats are psychopaths at heart. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 8285b91 | 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 ... | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 63682d1 | There is, I believe now, a force in stories, words in motion, that either drives them forward past things into feelings or doesn't. Sometimes the words fly over the fence and all the way out to the feelings. | stories words | Adam Gopnik | |
| 0631766 | Oliver, success is usually a feeling of mere relief, where failure is pain. Happiness, you see, lies in neither, but in sticking to a daily ritual and becoming absorbed in something useful. When the war is over, even the greatest warriors do not exult. They go back to their garden or kitchen or library -- or school -- and resume life. (as said by Mrs. Pearson) | philosophical | Adam Gopnik | |
| b05526b | We pursued the muses, instead of the mirrors. | Adam Gopnik |