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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 36f91b8 | reunions, she felt, were not much more than a scratching at the vague itch of memory. And like scratching, they rarely helped--indeed, scratching often made matters worse, as any dermatologist would tell you. | class-reunion scratching | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| 028bebc | The turtles and birds who lived on the islands were also very friendly, as they hardly ever saw any humans and were always pleased to have some company. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| b01f9aa | And if you do see any pirates, I don't want you to pick up any rough manners from them. Do you understand? | teaching | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| 3b19924 | Bill and Ed did not look as bad as the other two, but they both had six or seven large gold rings in each ear, and this made them rattle when they walked. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| e777589 | They'll go to jail' said the Captain. 'And they'll stay there until Christmas. Then, if they promise to give up piracy and take an honest job somewhere, they may be allowed to go free. | second-chances | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| d1dcafc | It was a job that suited Stinger perfectly, as he was always happy when snarling, and snarling at sharks is as snarly a job as anyone can imagine. Of course it was possible that one day he might meet a shark who wasn't frightened of him, but then that's another story, and no job can be perfect in all respects. | love-your-job | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| 2f44555 | Yes," she agreed, "there are times when I am unhappy and times when I am happy. There are more happy times than unhappy ones, I think." | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 56fc5fb | And if things go on as they are, in a few months the men will have cut all the trees down and that will be the end of the bubblegum tree - forever'. Nobody said anything. Billy thought that he had never heard such a sad story before. Surely somebody could do something before the bubblegum trees before it was too late. | trees-matter | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| 4038f98 | for most of us there was a central, unavoidable problem-- the world was populated by people who were unlike us . That explained so many wars-- particularly religious ones; that explained persecutions and injustices; that explained simple everyday irritation with one's fellow man: They were just not like us. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| e606a8e | did it make a difference if the remark never got back to the person about whom it was made? She thought not. The harm is done when the words are uttered: that is the act of belittlement, the act of diminishing the other, and it is that act which would cause pain to the victim. You said that about me? The wrong was located in the making of the cruel remark, rather than in the pain it might later cause. | belittlement cruel-words words-that-wound cruelty | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| a3f7d5c | one of those dreadful boarding schools. It was down on the South Coast. I think some very unpleasant things happened there.... So many lives were distorted by such cruelty. I know so many men who had to put up with that, so many.... | boarding-school boarding-schools cruelty | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| 9e9a1cc | one of the coasts of a country that was a lifeboat, and that lifeboat was under siege by people who wanted to be taken on board. She thought to the southern shores of Italy and the boats that came up from the south, crammed with the desperate of North Africa striving to get into Europe. The vessels capsized under their human cargo; there were people in the water, their dream coming to a watery end. How could one turn one's face against all .. | lifeboats lifeboat refugee europe refugees | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| 92bb8a0 | It seemed an odd thing to say, and yet 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 | ||
| e3f2c46 | The most that many people could hope for was that they should not incur the wrath of gods whom they had failed to appease or propitiate; beyond that, gods should be left to get on with their proper business and mortals with theirs. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 5002219 | Although she was unenthusiastic about theology, she had long since realised that the real point of prayer was not to flatter those addressed; prayer was a form of meditation, she decided, and it did not detract from its efficacy that nobody was listening. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 0e993c0 | acknowledge the unexpected exchange of fellow feeling between | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| ea6165d | When you don't talk about something, then something will talk about itself for you. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 53f2412 | She went on to say something else, but Jamie found his attention drifting. He was feeling sleepy, for it was warm, and he could lie there for ever, he thought, listening to the sound of Isabel's voice, in the way one listens to the conversations of birds, or the sound of a waterfall descending the side of a Scottish mountain; sounds for which we cannot come up with a meaning, but which we love dearly with all our heart, and loving anything .. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 84976f9 | the human world, he reflected, was divided into little clusters of people--tiny tribes, small groups of friends, families--and if you belonged to only a few of these, then your life was circumscribed. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 7ba3298 | That's a bit of philosophy right there. We all want ice cream in this life. That's what we want. And that tells us an awful lot about human nature and the way we feel--which is what philosophy is all about, I would have thought. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| e1905c9 | There are some people who start off knowing very little about the world and end up years later knowing even less. Never underestimate the capacity of the human mind for ignorance." Mr. Woodhouse found this very amusing." | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| d36ffbf | What they would see first would be a darkening of the sky in the east--a change from empty blue to a grey-white that would gradually shade into a heavy, inky purple. And then there would be a wind--the wind that preceded a storm and carried the smell of rain on its breath. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| fe0b3e4 | Mma Makutsi was unconvinced. "Where there is smoke there's fire, Mma. I have always said that." Mma Ramotswe could not let that pass. "But what does Clovis Andersen say in The Principles of Private Detection, Mma? Does he not say that you must be very careful to decide where the smoke is coming from? Smoke can drift, Mma. Those were his exact words, I think." | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 743cfb5 | He's called Ottolenghi, that chef. And he deserves a tongue twister of his own. Lo, Ottolenghi lengthens leeks laterally. How about that? Or, Competent chefs count cous cous cautiously? | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 2049756 | Time and time again people showed better qualities than we might dare to hope for, sometimes against all expectation. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 6c7c666 | Loving others, she thought, is the good thing we do in our lives. | trains-and-lovers | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| 1bbe17a | Contemplating this vast human suffering, you might be tempted to shrug your shoulders, but you could not. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 837f68d | skyline reveals a city's purpose and character. Oxford had its dreaming spires; Manhattan its glittering towers; Edinburgh its eccentric spikes. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| ab3ccc8 | people | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 7693390 | Africa will get nowhere until we have mechanics... Mechanics are the first stone in the building. Then there are other people on top. Doctors. Nurses. Teachers. But the whole thing is built on mechanics. That is why it is important to teach young people to be mechanics. | mechanics | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| ae73f8e | Her friend who treated her maid badly was not a wicked person. She behaved well towards her family...but when it came to her maid...she seemed to have little concern for her feelings. It occurred to Mma Ramotswe that such behaviour was no more than ignorance; an inability to understand the hopes and aspirations of others. Theat understanding...was the beginning of all morality. If you knew how a person was feeling, if you could imagine your.. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 5754e0c | Moral codes were not designed to be selective, nor indeed were they designed to be questioned. You could not say that you would observe this prohibition but not that. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| d258977 | But the problem is that even if you know that is the best thing to do, you often don't do it. ...it is true. It's as if there were two people inside you. One says: do this. Another says: do that. But both voices are inside the same person. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| e53d9ef | She wondered whether there was any way of getting him to take the pills by trickery. She did not like the idea of using underhand methods with Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, but when a person's reason was disturbed, then she thought that any means were justified in getting them better. It was as if a person had been kidnapped by some evil being and held ransom. You would not hesitate, she felt, to resort to trickery to defeat the evil being. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| cf95bf1 | One did not walk around the town with one's birth certificate stuck on one's back; why then should clothes have their labels on the outside? It was a very vulgar display, she felt, | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 039f7bd | paint | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 1d04778 | Gratitude was a lost art, she felt. People accepted things, took them as their right, and had forgotten how to give proper thanks. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 77f50d4 | It had given her pleasure to do things for him in his lifetime, and now it was a pleasure to do things for his memory. But the memory of a father went only so far. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| a5d49e6 | just like the affairs of the adult world--complicated rules and a history. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 245b0d7 | Emma was happy. She realized that happiness is something that springs from the generous treatment of others, and that until one makes that connection, happiness may prove elusive. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| b934b63 | There's a poem about onions," she said. "It's about how memory is like an onion--it makes you cry." | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 1e74b71 | It would be strange to live in a country where people were silent, passing one another in the street wordlessly, as if frightened of what the other might think or say. This was not the African way, where people would call out and converse with one another from opposite sides of a road, or across a wide expanse of bush, careless of who heard. Such conversations could be carried on by people walking in different directions, until voices grew .. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 4bbcc2f | Minty's in a bit of trouble, and he was not surprised. He said something about her sailing too close to the wind. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| ae91430 | Had he sailed too close to the wind? No, in his case another meteorological metaphor was appropriate perhaps: he had reaped whirlwinds--or at least what he had sown. She looked at her watch. | Alexander McCall Smith |