Alexander McCall Smith Quotes
Alexander McCall Smith Quotes
It was time to take the pumpkin out of the pot and eat it. In the final analysis, that was what solved these big problems of life. You could think and think and get nowhere, but you still had to eat your pumpkin. That brought you down to earth. That gave you a reason for going on. Pumpkin.
2261 we must love those with whom we live and work, and love them for all their failings, manifest and manifold though they be.
4199 Be content with who you are and where you are, and do whatever you can do to bring to others such contentment, and joy, and understanding that you have managed to find yourself.
1754 There was a distinction between lying and telling half-truths, but it was a very narrow one.
3330 No plaque reminds the passer-by of these glories, although there should be one; for those who invent biscuits bring great pleasure to many.
2651 Go to any small village anywhere in the world, and see what they remember. Everything. It's all there - passed on like a precious piece of information, some secret imparted from one who knew to one who yearns to know. Taken good care of.
4082 It is sometimes easier to be happy if you don't know everything.
1205 Do you realise that people die of boredom in London suburbs? It's the second biggest cause of death amongs the English in general. Sheer boredom...
2240 It's really rather easy to write eighth-century Chinese poetry," said Angus Lordie. "In English, of course. It requires little effort, I find.
4282 So it was perfectly possible that there were men who liked shopping, men who understood exactly what it was all about, but Mma Ramotwe had yet to meet such a man. Maybe they existed elsewhere - in France, perhaps - but they did not seem to be much in evidence in Botswana.
3934 Has anyone sen Mr Snark "
"I saw him in the tunnel about 15 minutes ago."
"Oh no " wailed Dr Ferman "he will have been atomised."
"Oh dear" muttered an MP. "Bye-election.
1622 For a short while she considered the idea of orchestral courtesy. Certainly one should avoid giving political offence: German orchestras, of course, used to be careful about playing Wagner abroad, at least in some countries, choosing instead German composers who were somewhat more ... apologetic.
4083 She was made for untidy rooms and rumpled beds.
3244 Myth could be as sustaining as reality - sometimes even more so.
4817 We put on our walls what we think is beautiful or inspiring, and if others think that it is manufactured or shallow, then they need not have it on their walls.
4497 If she was going to remain an engaged lady, then she would make the most of it, and one of the ways to do this would be to enjoy her free time.
1325 She did not think that those who were late, or the ancestors themselves, would wish punishment upon us, no matter what our transgressions. It was far more likely that there would be love, falling like rain from above, changing the hearts of the wicked; transforming them
2065 Neighbours are given to us on the same basis as we are given our families. There is no element of choice involved - none at all.
1416 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.
4060 We act out our lives to a soundtrack, thought Isabel, the music that becomes, for a spell, out favourite and is listened to again and again until it stands for the time itself. But that was about all the scripting that we achieved; the rest, for most of us, was extemporising.
2913 We shall change all that...because it is possible to change the world, if one is determined enough, and if one sees with sufficient clarity just what has to be changed.
1755 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.
4506 The forges of friendship, thought Angus, may be busy ones, but their dorrs are always open.
2629 ...they are dazzled by all the money that they are being offered. That is what money does, Mma Ramotswe - you must have seen that. Sometime we need to look the other way when people put money in front of our noses. We have to look at the other things we can see so the money doesn't hide them.
4382 But he'll never be fully recognised, because Scots literature these days is all about complaining and moaning and being injured in one's soul.
2111 The language of Cat's generation was far harder than that of her own, and more pithily correct: in their terms, he was a hunk. But why, she wondered, should anybody actually want a hunk, when non-hunks were so much more interesting?
2325 Men are very sensitive, Mma Makutsi. You would not always think it to look at them, but they are. They do not like you to point out that they are wrong, even when they are. That is the way things are, Mma-it just is.
2344 Boys, men," she said. "They're all the same. They think that this [their manhood] is something special and they're all so proud of it. They do not know how ridiculous it is.
2828 Men can be teenagers until well into their twenties. That is well known
4149 Our stomachs live in towns," said Mma Potokwani, patting the front of her dress. 'That is where the work is. Our stomachs know that. But our hearts are usually somewhere else.
4099 Alexander McCall Smith Wiki
Alexander McCall Smith At Amazon