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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 9f72707 | She should not have taken any of these people at face value. She had been naive. But this conclusion, she realized, pointed unambiguously in the direction of cynicism. And she would not be a cynic. It was better to be naive, much better. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| b268530 | Isabel smiled. She liked a conversation that went in odd directions; she liked the idea of playfulness in speech. People could be so depressingly literal. Jamie | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 87ed5b8 | That was the marvelous thing about going back to one's roots; there was no need for explanation. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 292a323 | But he was an only child and an only son, and for a mother in such a position it is not always easy to accept that another woman will eventually enter her son's life and, if all goes according to plan--the plan being that of the other woman--take him away. This common conflict, so understandable and so poignant, is played out time and time again, and almost always with the same painful result: Mother loses. It is so, of course, if Mother is.. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 13a84f1 | They paid the deposit immediately and appeared to be good tenants although they were reluctant to invite him over the threshold once they had moved in. "There is no need for you to come in," he had been told by a burly Russian who answered the door when he had called to see whether all was well. "There is nothing wrong. Everything functions. We are very happy. Goodbye." | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| f07ac87 | There were women in the sacred dance group, no doubt, and one of these might be taken aside, woman to woman, and asked to help see that he came to no harm. England was full of helpful women, Berthea was convinced: there were legions of them, all anxious to help in some way and many of them feeling quite frustrated that there were not quite enough men--for demographic reasons--in need of their help. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| cd5b1d8 | He took to wearing a Greek merchant navy captain's cap, and spending his mornings at the marina telling the staff what to do. "Sure thing, Captain Eddie," they replied. But they never did what he asked them to do, and Eddie never noticed. So everybody was content." | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 9c5323f | Sometimes wickedness prevails. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| eb46a96 | It was Lennie Marchbanks at the door. She had met him once or twice before and rather liked him; mechanics struck her as being such easy, agreeable people. And, she noticed, as a psychotherapist, one never had a mechanic for a patient. Why was that? Were they invariably balanced people, free of the neuroses that afflicted non-mechanically-minded others? | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| a672700 | something just because everybody | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| d0d9c6c | She had brought all of this on herself, and so she had, in a sense, got what she deserved. But, even so, Mma Ramotswe reminded herself, she had a soul like everyone else, and one should not crow over the defeat even of those who richly deserve to be defeated. That was dangerous, because then you yourself might get what you deserve for reveling in the misfortunes of another. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 58b6845 | every man has a map in his heart of his own country and that the heart will never allow you to forget this map. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 5f912dc | I promise to share all my worldly goods-including letters, parcels and other items of correspondence, opened or unopened. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 20f6c15 | Love had transformed the world for me. Transformed it. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| d827c36 | That sent her friends to the dictionary, which gave her additional satisfaction. 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. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 5e25c0f | Znajdujemy w zyciu to, czego szukamy", powiedzial kiedys do niej ojciec. I mial racje: jesli szukasz w zyciu szczescia, znajdziesz szczescie, jesli szukasz nieufnosci, zazdrosci i nienawisci, to znajdziesz nieufnosc, zazdrosc i nienawisc." | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 6510d92 | Barbara said to herself: Oh, please, please, please! Please let nothing go wrong with this--this wildly improbable, impossible, but gorgeous thing. She was not sure to whom to address this invocation. To Venus, perhaps? If the goddess of love were listening, she would surely cherish such an invocation and understand the urgency, the yearning, that lay behind it. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 7c42dff | He had sat there with ten glasses set out in front of him, and panicked when he tasted the first. He thought that the wine was Portuguese, and was on the point of setting out the arguments to support this view when it had occurred to him that it might be Argentinian. From then on, his progress through the examination had gone downhill. Instead of using the small spittoon that each candidate had on his desk, William had drained the first gla.. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| b002ba9 | Perhaps one should expect to be attended to by philosophers in Edinburgh delicatessens, just as one might be waited upon by psychoanalysts in the restaurants of Buenos Aires. Is the braised beef really what you want? | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| b7669c5 | William closed his eyes in sheer ecstasy. "Look, I know it's absolutely no notice at all, but would you by any chance be free for dinner tonight?" he asked. Again there was a silence. And then, once again, came the words to boost any heart--even that of a middle-aged wine dealer, a failed Master of Wine, and a failed everything else--"What a lovely idea! Yes, of course." | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 8107d2a | And it was not surprising, perhaps, that he should feel it--this little boy who felt things so deeply; for we all feel that about our friends; we all feel that about those around whom we might put an arm. We all feel that about the darkness into which we go with others and about the very understandable fears that can be so easily dispelled, put to flight, by a simple gesture | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 175e9f1 | Now that he had invited Tilly, William found himself trying to remember what she looked like. It was almost like going on a blind date, he thought, something that previously he would never have dreamed of doing but he now found rather exciting. She was certainly attractive, he was sure of that, even if he had seen her only once, and for a very brief period. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 7a3b9d8 | He went to the cupboard where he had stored Eddie's remaining possessions. There was, as he had remembered, a pair of jeans, and he took these out and unfolded them. They were distressed, but no more so than new jeans were these days, and they appeared to fit. William examined himself in the mirror; the jeans took off ten years, he thought, possibly more, and they were perfect with the blazer. This was the very essence of casual smart, he t.. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 067f00a | Those regularly-featured Hollywood males made her feel slightly nauseous; and the same could be said for their female equivalents, hardly intellectuals they. These people had regular features but were actually ugly because they tended to be so completely vacuous. Regularity without some metaphysical value behind it, some beauty of soul or character, was more disappointing - and indeed repulsive - than the honestly haphazard, the humanly mes.. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 67b5c1a | from that, there was nothing. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| d78d933 | away. Or | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 8afa9d5 | That's perfect," he said. "I'm sorry about that. It's genetic, I think. My mother had exactly the same problem, and a cousin of hers too. We're allergic to raw onion." | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| a785acc | Yet she was determined that when she married she would not forget who she was and who her people were. She would not affect any airs. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 9a716fa | Never be put off by rudeness, Mma," she whispered. "It is the rude person who is rude, not you." | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| acf23c4 | But for each person who is made happy by love, there will be many for whom it turns out to be a cause of regret. That is because it can be so fleeting; one moment it may take our breath away, the next it may leave us bereft. When it does that, love can be like a haunting, staying with us for year after year; we know that it is gone, but somehow we persuade ourselves that it is still there... Nobody would choose to be in love like that, to h.. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| ad7373a | Pickled onions had nothing to do with moral imagination, but were important in their own quiet, vinegary way, Isabel supposed. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 4634f3a | It is because you are generous in spirit; and may I be like that; may I become like you--which unrealistic wish, to become the other, is such a true and revealing symptom of love, its most obvious clue, its unmistakable calling card. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| c7d729e | You can go through life and make new friends every year--every month practically--but there was never any substitute for those friendships of childhood that survive into adult years. Those are the ones in which we are bound to one another with hoops of steel. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| b41232a | all of us had a view from somewhere, a view of the world from the perspective of who we were, of what had happened to us, of how we thought about things. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 8788301 | Mma Ramotswe decided to go back into her office. There was a curious thing about male conversation that she had noticed - men often ended up poking fun at one another. Women did this only rarely, but men seemed to love insulting one another. It was very strange. | humanity men-and-women | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| 9ec0a5c | Of course not," said Mma Makutsi. "There is nothing to be ashamed of in drinking one hundred cups of tea a week, Mma. Which is ..." She paused again. "More than five thousand cups of tea a year, Mma. That is very impressive." "Well, there you are, Mma Makutsi. Those are the figures. You cannot argue with figures, can you?" Mma Makutsi looked thoughtful. "And ours is just a small business. We use all that red bush tea for you and all that or.. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| e5b1a42 | thinking about somebody every day of his life... oh yes, he said to himself. Oh yes, you do. You think about somebody. He fills your world. He is all about you, a presence, and you think about him; you can't help it, because he's always there, in your thoughts. But you know, of course, that all the while you're thinking about him, he's not thinking about you. That's the hardest thing about it. That's what makes it so very, very hard to bear.. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| e86d607 | We change the earth and our changes may only be temporary; yet the signs of what we have done may persist, as these mounds did. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 0475b89 | It was safer, he thought, to keep it to himself; because there are many ways of loving. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| e85588f | A moral dilemma is equally absorbing whether the stakes are the destiny of nations or the happiness of one or two people - at the most. | happiness dilemma | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| 1885950 | I am blessed, and being blessed is something more than just having something; it is a state of mind in which the good of the world is illuminated, is understood. It is as if one is vouchsafed a vision of some sort, she thought, a vision of love, of agape, of the essential value of each and every living thing. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| d9c9143 | And having a servant was not a sign of wealth or privilege--even a modest establishment would have a maid, as this was an important way of providing employment that would otherwise not exist. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 6fba1ab | If people have ghosts, then why shouldn't other things have them? What makes us so special that only we can have ghosts? | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 143e421 | There are lies you tell with your lips and lies you don't need your lips for. And once people start telling lies, then they become like spiders who weave their web about themselves. They become stuck-caught by the lies all about them. And then they can't get out of the web, no matter how hard they try. | Alexander McCall Smith |