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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 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 | ||
| aae4ebe | His particular insight was that we need to be at home; all his concerns with division within ourselves, with the tragic flaws in our nature, with the thwarting of love--all these point to the need that he felt we had within us to locate ourselves in a place we could live in with love, with people with whom we could share. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 41511fa | Mma Makutsi sighed. "You don't understand, Charlie. The word chairman covers both men and women." She paused. "Mind you, Mma Potokwane, many people these days just use the word chair. Perhaps you'd like--" She was not allowed to finish. "Certainly not, Mma," said Mma Potokwane. "I am not a chair--I am a person." | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 3623b35 | Anna asked, "Does that matter? What counts is the result, not the route by which one reaches the result. It's often all a matter of luck." Ulf pondered this. The role of luck in human affairs had always intrigued him. So much of what we did was influenced by factors that were beyond our control--the vagaries of others, sequences of events that we initiated in ignorance of where they would lead, chance meetings that led to the making of a de.. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| b0602d8 | The world was a place of sadness and strife, of selfish behaviour and disagreement, of oppression and injustice; and efforts to remedy that, to set right the scales of justice, sometimes seemed like patching up a crack in a dam wall with sticking plaster. But you had to do what you could, and, more specifically, what your role in life expected of you. And he was a detective; he was a member of the Malmo Criminal Investigation Authority, and.. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 84e590b | Dr. Svensson had once counselled him to think of the things you're doing rather than the things you did. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 770298b | Dogs can read signals -- look at sheepdogs; they understand hand movements for left and right. Dogs are no fools, you know." He paused. "Well, some are. Some dogs are truly stupid, Ulf." | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 777ea2c | The Germans had a word for everything - a word that could be very focused, very specific, because it could be constructed for a precise set of circumstances. They even had a word, it was said, for the feeling of envy experienced when one sees the tasty dishes ordered by others in a restaurant and it is too late to change one's own order. Mahlneid, meal envy, she believed that was the word - if it existed at all. People invented German compo.. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 286b078 | Most children have become very surly. That is because they are not taught to think about others any more. They are, quite simply, spoiled. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 7c22809 | As a general rule, making other people happy is one of the few things we can do with utter certainty that what we're doing is the right thing. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| bef6e68 | and was quite happy to let people get on with their jobs without his breathing down their necks. Privately, he and his family led a model life. He helped with Swedish-adjustment classes for refugees, while his wife, Anita, was an accountant who voluntarily did the accounts of two local charities. Their two clear-eyed sons had co-founded an aero-modelling club for disadvantaged youths. They were well liked in the suburb in which they lived, .. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| b6ef48e | The tree still celebrates its essential treeness through song, as nature will do whatever we impose on her. Birds still sing their ancient songs in the middle of a bustling city, with all its cacophony of man-made sounds. Dry leaves still rustle like dice even when growing against concrete or hewn stone. Out of a tiny crack in a pavement will crawl a perfectly formed insect, a creature of curves and protrusions amidst a linear world of man'.. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| bae134e | It was perfectly possible to portray scientific knowledge as socially determined - and therefore not true in any real sense - when one was safe on the ground in Paris; but would you ask the same question in a jet aircraft at thirty-five thousand feet, when that same knowledge underpinned the very engineering that was keeping one up in the air? | Alexander McCall Smith |