Alexander McCall Smith Quotes
Top 100 wise famous quotes and sayings by Alexander McCall Smith
Alexander McCall Smith Famous Quotes & Sayings
Discover top inspirational quotes from Alexander McCall Smith on Wise Famous Quotes.
None of us, she thought, wants the world we know to come to an end; we do not want familiar things to be taken from us.
People stuck by others for years and years, in the face of all odds, and it should be relief, not disbelief, that one felt on witnessing it.
No plaque reminds the passer-by of these glories, although there should be one; for those who invent biscuits bring great pleasure to many.
A society that undermined its teachers and their authority only dug away at its own sure foundations.
Simple questions
and simple answers
were what we needed in life. That was what Mma Ramotswe believed. Yes.
and simple answers
were what we needed in life. That was what Mma Ramotswe believed. Yes.
It's so difficult to sustain a fatwa,' said Domenica. 'One has to be so enthusiastic. I'm not sure if I could find the moral energy myself.
that weddings are far more than marriage ceremonies; we know that they are occasions for family stock-taking and catharsis; that
He agreed with David Hockney that an artist really had to be able to draw before anything else could be achieved.
It was all very well occupying the moral high ground on electoral reform, but what really mattered, she thought, was how you treated your mother.
That, said Isabel, is the most painful feature of lost love. you wonder what the other person is doing. Right at this moment. What is he/she doing?
A kind word, a word of encouragement or admiration, could shift the heaviest, most recalcitrant baggage.
There is a tidal wave of ignorance, Mma Ramotswe. It is a great tidal wave and it will drown all of us if we are not careful.
International business, once allowed to stalk uncontrolled, killed the local, the small, the quirky.
Self-doubt was a luxury, as, perhaps, was the examined life. And yet the examined life, as the adage had it, was the only life worth living.
If people have ghosts, then why shouldn't other things have them? What makes us so special that only we can have ghosts?
There were two classes of persons upon whom a duty of virtually absolute confidentiality rested: doctors and lovers.
All the good things that we have in life are on temporary loan, at best, and can be taken away from us in an instant.
Believe me, there's nothing more brittle than human beauty. Encounter it. Savour it, by all means. Then watch how it turns to dust.
most dogs seemed contented enough, and often seemed rather happier than the humans attached to them.
People did not spend enough time sitting and talking, she thought, and it was important that sitting and talking time be preserved.
Distant wrongs, she thought: an interesting issue in moral philosophy. Do past wrongs seem less wrong to us simply because they are less vivid?
Insincerity had never come easily to her, but good manners required it on occasion, even if a superhuman effort was needed.
None of us is immune to shipwreck. Come, beckons the fatal shore: come and die on my white sands, it said. And we do.
I think that the measure of whether a life has been a good one is how much love there has been in that life
love both given and received.
love both given and received.
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.
But we are all fortunate in one way or another. The task for most of us is to identify in what way that is, would you not agree?
Do not be ashamed to cry, Rra," said Mma Ramotswe. "It is the way that things begin to get better. It is the first step.
It's through the small things that we develop our moral imagination, so that we can understand the sufferings of others.
As a writer, you have to realize that people want to like the characters, so you have to be careful to keep them involved.
We all have people in our lives we don't really choose as friends but with whom we're, well, lumbered, I suppose. Heart-sink friends.
There are so many things we take in subconsciously and are unaware we ever saw. There is plenty of lumber like that in our minds.
There was no need for words, for there are times when words can only hint at what the heart would wish to say.
... people decided what they thought and would not be moved, not even by the most patient, the most rational argument.
This is a city of shifting light, of changing skies, of sudden vistas. A city so beautiful it breaks the heart again and again.
It was always disconcerting to meet those who had become so obsessed with a single topic that they could not see their concerns in context.
Violins sang, brass crowed, while bassoons, she felt, rumbled according to a Richter scale all of their own. Charlie
None of us knows how we will cope with snakes until the moment arises, and then most of us find out that we do not do it very well.
She's sociopathic. She will have no moral compunction in doing whatever is in her interests. It's as simple as that.
The size of one's house might bear a relationship to the size of one's opinion of oneself, but it had nothing to do with one's real worth.
When you allow people to do what they wish, then that is what they do. They stop doing the things they need to do.
The night is a very bad time for questions to which there are no answers." Mr Badule looked at her. "You are very right, my sister. There is
The telling of a story, like virtually everything in this life, was always made all the easier by a cup of tea.
There are so many ways of falling off the high moral ground you've carefully built up for yourself. Moral ground is like that - slippery at the edges.
The danger, of course, is that we spend time imagining that we would be happier elsewhere, and forget to cultivate happiness where fate has placed us.
Lions walk on four legs," observed Mma Makutsi. "Was this man walking on four legs? That can be a big giveaway, Mma.
The fear of what might happen in the future is almost always worse than the future that eventually arrives.
The sound of the kettle boiling was in itself the sound of normality, of reason, the sound of a fight back against the sadness of things.
Telling a person with toothache that there are others with greater toothache than their own was no help at all.
Tolerance was like one of those soothing creams - it drew out inflammation, it did away with the pain.
You can't deceive your own mother. That's the one person, the only one, to whom you will always be transparent.