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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| ca11d67 | Everybody who consulted her was, in their way, hurting--even this rich man with his big Mercedes-Benz and his expensive cuff-links. Human hurt was like lightning; it did not choose its targets, but struck, with rough equality and little regard to position, achievement, or moral desert. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 3c36a8f | When we dismiss or deny the hopes of others, she thought, we forget that they, like us, have only one chance in this life. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 1b0a6b2 | Back home in Arbroath, they had thought that she was just a girl-she had heard one of her male relatives say just that-and that somebody who was just a girl had nothing really important to say about anything. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| b2b4346 | I am grateful to you for being who you are: for standing up for ladies with large glasses and a bad skin and for everybody else who has had to battle to get where they have got. And most of all I am grateful to you for being my friend, Mma; I am grateful to you for that. That is the best thing that anybody can be to anybody else--a friend. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 085e95f | been able to find out what the really big questions are. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 6ee64e9 | If efficiency were the only value in this life, then we would be content to eat bland but nutritious food every day--and the same food at that. That would keep us alive, but it would make for very dull mealtimes. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 3255635 | No sailor could be lonelier than a man standing in the middle of our land, with the miles and miles of blue about him. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 2e36571 | And where does religion come into it? Are Protestant countries inherently less corrupt?" "No," she said. "I don't think it's that simple. The issue, I suppose, is whether a culture stresses telling the truth. That's the real point. It's not religion." | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 63f0877 | telephoned Jamie the next morning at the earliest decent hour; nine o'clock, in her view. Isabel observed an etiquette of the telephone: a call before eight in the morning was an emergency; between eight and nine it was an intrusion; thereafter calls could be made until ten in the evening, although anything after nine-thirty required an apology for the disturbance. After ten one was into emergency time again. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 59209e4 | When meeting for lunch somebody one's uncomfortable with, it's important to have somewhere to look, don't you agree? | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| ccb5355 | Such was human progress; and to think that they were even talking now about filing papers in something called the Cloud. She was not sure how good an idea that would be in a country like Botswana, where the skies were always clear and empty, but that did not seem to be too much of an issue. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| dbbe188 | Alexander McCall Smith, The Second-Worst Restaurant in France: A Paul Stuart Novel (Pantheon, 7/16) | Publishers Lunch | ||
| f17232d | Caution was always required when you looked under a bed--anybody's bed, even your own. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| d282a5b | Sometimes it seemed as if the world itself was broken, that there was something wrong with all of us, something broken in such a way that it might not be put together again; but the holding of hands, human hand in human hand, could help, could make the world seem less broken. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| ac2c433 | Number 1," read Dr Fairbairn. "People making me do things I don't want to do. I hate this. I hate this. Every day I have to do things that other people want me to do and it leaves me no time to do any of the things I want to do. And nobody asks me what I want to do, anyway." | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 4e5a1e7 | You had to watch people--if you were not careful, all sorts of people would promote themselves well above their real station in life, causing nothing but confusion and uncertainty | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| a111d38 | It was a warm evening, at least by the standards applied in Scotland, where summer is sometimes no more than a promise, an aspiration | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 977f883 | Eddie let out a whistle. "You really got rid of that old bag." "Please don't call her that." "But that's what she is," said Eddie. "She complained to me about the Parmesan the other day. She more or less accused me of substituting grana. She's a real pain. Big-time." | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 215bd00 | Giving gave every bit as much pleasure as receiving--if not more, and denying that pleasure to others could be churlish. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| bfe7ef8 | A man could be a hereditary ruler, or an elected president, but not be a gentleman, and that would show in his every deed. But if you had a leader who was a gentleman, with all that this meant, then you were lucky indeed. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| d07f1f4 | Don't be excessively judgmental, if you like, but always-always-be prepared to make a judgment. Otherwise you'll go through life not really knowing what you mean. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| c0c6eca | Very few people imagine their own future accurately. And then they're often pleasantly surprised. | surprise | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| d6cbcdd | He also spends a lot of my money on vitamin pills and biltong. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 1f0f779 | The sun went, and it was dark. He sat beside her in the comfortable darkness and they listened, contentedly, to the sounds of Africa settling down for the night. A dog barked somewhere; a car engine raced and then died away; there was a touch of wind, warm dusty wind, redolent of thorn trees. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 52fe98d | How sorry she felt for white people, who couldn't do any of this, and who were always dashing around and worrying themselves over things that were going to happen anyway. What use was it having all that money if you could never sit still or just watch your cattle eating grass? None, in her view; none at all, and yet they did not know it. Every so often you met a white person | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 2a8c451 | If you lived in a house your parents lived in, then you would not have had to buy it. But the house itself represented inherited wealth, and in some eyes, that was somehow tainted. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 5c5893e | But the real question, boys, is this: do we have a duty to do anything to stop things we may not like? Is it all right just to do nothing, provided that we don't do anything that makes matters worse? | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 203e234 | Angus smiled. "So nothing's certain, then?" "That's right," said Big Lou. "Except death and taxes," interjected Matthew. "Isn't that how the saying goes?" "They don't pay taxes in Italy," observed Angus. "I knew a painter in Naples who never paid taxes-ever. Very good painter too." "What happened to him?" asked Matthew. "He died," said Angus. 33." | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 086f33e | Some people mocked you if you said that you joined others when your time came. Well, they could laugh, those clever people, but we surely had to hope, and a life without hope of any sort was no life: it was a sky without stars, a landscape of sorrow and emptiness. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 17499f1 | He was a man of the very broadest outlook, but he never believed in going anywhere. He had a very sensitive stomach, you know, and that is always a disincentive to travel. If you have a sensitive stomach, it is undoubtedly best to remain at home. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 1c4099c | It defeated him that anybody could ever bring such a result about if they knew, or could imagine, the heartbreak of the victim's family. Of course the people who did these things were usually deficient in moral imagination--they could not see what it would be like because they simply lacked the capacity to do so. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 301ffc5 | And would you like to do that, Bertie?" asked the psychotherapist. Bertie nodded. Dr. St. Clair scribbled a note on his pad. Fantasies of escape, he wrote. But why Iceland? 50. A Fiscally Responsible Boy For some reason unknown" | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 6a0c84a | She did not have strong views on politics. She did not like the confrontational nature of much political discussion; why could people not argue politely, she wondered, taking into account the views of others and accepting that people might differ with one another in perfectly good faith? | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| b313e03 | Poor Erik," muttered Anna. "No," said Ulf. "No. Not poor Erik--fortunate Erik." Anna gave Ulf a dubious look. "But all he thinks of..." "...is fishing. Yes, but does that make him unhappy? Quite the contrary: Erik is utterly happy. Erik is completely resolved." | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 5142e42 | For that was a very special sort of love, she realised--love given back to one who loved you; that love was like the first rain, the longed-for rain, which washed away the pain and sadness of the world so that you forgot that those things had ever been there. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| e4d250c | Somewhere in the organisation, high in its upper reaches, were minds that churned out page after page of guidance notes, instructions, and policy statements. Most of these were filed and forgotten; seldom did they make any difference to the way in which people carried out their duties. But the procedure for procedures had to be gone through, in accordance with further procedural guidelines. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| df41638 | Sometimes the world seemed so unfair: good people were tricked or bullied by bad people, and the bad people seemed to get away with it. If only he could do something about it, he said to himself. But then he thought: What can I possibly do? And the answer, it seemed to him, was: Not much. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 96f28c1 | And that perhaps part of the secret of leading a life in which you would not always be worrying about things, or complaining about them, was to accept that there were people who just saw things differently from you and always would. Once you understood that, then you could accept the people themselves as they were and not try to change them. What was even more important, perhaps, was that you could love those people who looked at things so .. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 559dd3d | Her voice rose in her refutation. "We are not corrupt, Rra." "Yes," he said enthusiastically. "That's just the right thing to say, Mma. Just right. And anyway, this corruption nonsense--what are they talking about? Is it corruption to do whatever is necessary to make sure that important economic assets are constructed? Is it corrupt to make sure that jobs are created for people currently without work? Is that corrupt, Mma? If it is, then I .. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| e971b30 | Addressing his friend, he draws attention to what she brings to the world through her therapeutic calling: We fall down in the dance, we make The old ridiculous mistake, But always there are such as you Forgiving, helping what we do. O every day in sleep and labour Our life and death are with our neighbour, And love illuminates again The city and the lion's den, The world's great rage, the travel of young men. These lines are about the pers.. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 748451a | Alain de Botton has written a book called How Proust Can Change Your Life, a title that I suspect was devised with at least some tongue in cheek but that speaks, nonetheless, to a very real possibility of personal transformation. The title of this book is in a way lighthearted homage to de Botton's remarkable book. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| d35eb3e | The whole culture of work had become so intrusive and demanding that people had to do it. And the result was that they were left with little time for simply living their lives, for going for a walk, for sitting in a bar, for reading a book. It was all work. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| d1e9820 | There are countless other instances of Auden's delight in using words on the cusp of that damning dictionary verdict archaic. Never does one get the impression that these words are being used in a showy way: they are there deliberately, and sometimes, no doubt, they are chosen not only for their pleasurable quality but because they have the right number of syllables for the line, but they are never used to impress. Rather, they are used to .. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 9898932 | We do not want people thinking that we're trying to start a dynasty," he explained. "You know how you get those politicians who are sons of other politicians and grandsons of even more politicians. I do not think that is very democratic, and so I shall not be involved in this campaign, even if I fully support it" | Alexander McCall Smith |