Top 100 Alexander Mccall Smith Quotes
#3. When you don't talk about something, then something will talk about itself for you.
Alexander McCall Smith
#4. 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
#7. Lions walk on four legs," observed Mma Makutsi. "Was this man walking on four legs? That can be a big giveaway, Mma.
Alexander McCall Smith
#8. The recipe for each child is just for that child, even if it is the same mother and father.
Alexander McCall Smith
#9. In her experience, the places one set off for were usually still there no matter when one arrived; it would be different, naturally enough, if towns, villages, houses moved - then one might have a real reason to hurry - but they did not.
Alexander McCall Smith
#10. We were all people - men and women - and you could never say that one group of people was less important than another.
Alexander McCall Smith
#11. By comparison with such lives, our days were inconsequential indeed, and yet even though our canvas was small, still we could paint a masterpiece - as long as we were content for it to be a miniature.
Alexander McCall Smith
#12. But who doesn't have a lot of unread books? It's nice, though, to know they are there.
Alexander McCall Smith
#13. 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.
Alexander McCall Smith
#14. The queue for happiness was not well ordered, he thought; it stretched out and wound round corners, and sometimes, it seemed, the end was so hard to see.
Alexander McCall Smith
#15. I told him that if a man is born in a dry place, then although he may dream of rain, he does not want too much, and that he will not mind the sun that beats down and down.
Alexander McCall Smith
#16. It's easy to be foolish ... It's dead simple, really. All you have to be is human and to allow yourself to do the human things, like fall in love with somebody when you know that there's no point and when you know, too, that it's just going to make you unhappy.
Alexander McCall Smith
#17. Bureaucracy was very rarely an obstruction, provided that one applied to it the insights of ordinary, everyday psychology
Alexander McCall Smith
#21. Remember that, she said to herself; remember that in your dealings with others - they may be dying.
Alexander McCall Smith
#23. She was, he reflected, one of his closest friends, in a rather curious, slightly old-fashioned way.
Alexander McCall Smith
#24. But just because somebody has lots of sweets does not mean that he has stolen them. One thing, you see, does not always lead to another.
Alexander McCall Smith
#25. Sometimes the people who were closest to you were also those who were furthest away.
Alexander McCall Smith
#27. Believe me, there's nothing more brittle than human beauty. Encounter it. Savour it, by all means. Then watch how it turns to dust.
Alexander McCall Smith
#28. There are plenty of people who might prefer to go sideways. What about them? How are we to inspire them?
Alexander McCall Smith
#30. The problem with being me, thought Isabel, as she walked along George IV Bridge, is that I keep thinking about the problem of being me.
Alexander McCall Smith
#31. I have three older sisters, so we were a reasonably large family and, in general, a happy one.
Alexander McCall Smith
#32. I'm very interested in tea. I wouldn't mind being involved in some aspect of the tea industry.
Alexander McCall Smith
#34. The telling of a story, like virtually everything in this life, was always made all the easier by a cup of tea.
Alexander McCall Smith
#35. And it was young men in red cars who were the most dangerous of all. Such people were best given a wide berth, both in and out of the car.
Alexander McCall Smith
#36. But we all waste opportunities,' said Domenica. Every single one of us. Every young person does it. It's because we think we have so much time, and then, when we realise that our time is finite, it's too late.
Alexander McCall Smith
#37. My parents were very supportive and always encouraged us. My father was a gentle, nice man. My mother was quite a colorful character and a keen reader who encouraged me to write.
Alexander McCall Smith
#38. I cannot see myself in a new car. I am a tiny white van person. That is what i want!
Alexander McCall Smith
#39. It was reasonable enough, of course, for people to wish to speak to a man, if that is what they wanted, but that did not mean that a man would be better.
Alexander McCall Smith
#40. It's really rather easy to write eighth-century Chinese poetry," said Angus Lordie. "In English, of course. It requires little effort, I find.
Alexander McCall Smith
#41. 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.
Alexander McCall Smith
#43. 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.
Alexander McCall Smith
#44. There was corruption at every turn, and those who stood for honesty and integrity were more and more vulnerable, more and more isolated amongst the hordes of people who simply had no moral sense. And
Alexander McCall Smith
#45. Writers just play out their fantasies in their books. They are often very unstable, tricky people, Bertie. Writers are usually very bad at real life and feel that they have to create imaginary lives to make up for it.
Alexander McCall Smith
#46. Botswana is actually very peaceful. It's democratic. It never was in debt. They've been fortunate, they've had diamonds.
Alexander McCall Smith
#48. It seems to me that we're in danger of losing sight of certain basic civic values in society by allowing the growth of a whole generation of people who really have no sense of attachment to society.
Alexander McCall Smith
#49. Leave them," said Isabel. "Jamie can iron them himself. It's very therapeutic for men to iron. Therapeutic for women, that is.
Alexander McCall Smith
#51. Isabel saw the intimacy of the gestures and felt immediately empty, a sensation so physical and so overwhelming that she felt for a moment that she might stop breathing, being empty of air
Alexander McCall Smith
#52. There were worlds within worlds, and each will have within its confines values and meaning. It may not really matter to the world at large, thought Isabel, that I should feel happy rather than sad, but it matters to me, and the fact that it matters matters.
Alexander McCall Smith
#53. 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.
Alexander McCall Smith
#54. 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.
Alexander McCall Smith
#55. most dogs seemed contented enough, and often seemed rather happier than the humans attached to them.
Alexander McCall Smith
#57. I am just a tiny person in Africa, but there is a place for me, and for everybody, to sit down on this earth and touch it and call it their own.
Alexander McCall Smith
#58. Human history seems to me to be one long story of people sweeping down - or up, I suppose - replacing other people in the process.
Alexander McCall Smith
#59. And that, in a way, was the burden of being a philosopher: one knew what one had to do, but it was so often the opposite of what one really wanted to do.
Alexander McCall Smith
#60. The ordinary you, the you that has to go to work every morning, the you that has to run a household, pay bills, do all of those things
that you is somehow changed into an exciting, artistic, fully alive you. That's what Paris does.
Alexander McCall Smith
#61. I think that we've made great moral progress in the second half of the 20th century in many respects, and particularly in relation to human rights but I think that we are losing sight of some of the values of concern for others, and self-respect and respect for others.
Alexander McCall Smith
#62. Any extreme political creed brought only darkness in the long run; it lit up nothing. The best politics were those of caution, tolerance and moderation, Angus maintained, but such politics were, alas, also very dull, and certainly moved nobody to poetry.
Alexander McCall Smith
#63. Nobody enjoys being on display," said Isabel. But then she thought: Some do, and so she added, "Except actors. And narcissists.
Alexander McCall Smith
#64. ... there is faith and faith. One form of faith is actual practice - the rituals and so on - the other form of faith involves actually believing in it.
Alexander McCall Smith
#65. And took us to the end of long, dark tunnels, which were filled with green rock and dust. My job was to load rock after it had been blasted, and I did this for seven hours a day. I grew
Alexander McCall Smith
#66. That's perfect," he said. "I'm sorry about that. It's genetic, I think. My mother had exactly the same problem, and a cousin of hers too. We're allergic to raw onion.
Alexander McCall Smith
#67. Absurdly, irrationally, she believed that music could make a difference to the temper of the world.She did not investigate this belief, test it to see whether it made sense;she simply believed it, and so she chose music that expressed order and healing:Bach for order, Mozart for healing.
Alexander McCall Smith
#69. Every novel presents a slice of life. A noir policier for example presents one slice, one that perhaps addresses social dysfunction or some sort of pathology, while mine present a slice that is more upbeat and affirmative.
Alexander McCall Smith
#70. We need a person whom we can make our little god on this earth, as the old Kgatla saying had it. Whether it was a spouse, or a child, or a parent, or anybody else for that matter, there must be somebody who gives our lives purpose.
Alexander McCall Smith
#71. If we were all responsible for the misdeeds of the governments that represent us, thought Isabel, then the moral burden would be just too great.
Alexander McCall Smith
#72. Like ageism and sexism, lookism was everywhere, resulting in the good-looking getting the best jobs, winning all the plaudits, being let off the most parking tickets by soft-hearted traffic wardens; being generally favoured.
Alexander McCall Smith
#74. You can't deceive your own mother. That's the one person, the only one, to whom you will always be transparent.
Alexander McCall Smith
#75. Now the tea began to do its work- as it always did- and the world that only a few minutes previously had seemed so bleak started to seem less so.
Alexander McCall Smith
#77. I do not think this is so, because there is no difference between white men and black men; we are all the same; we are just people.
Alexander McCall Smith
#78. Penury was a matter of hard chairs and mean cushions; prosperity - old money - was a matter of feathers: an absurd reductionist view of it, but at times quite strikingly true.
Alexander McCall Smith
#79. And the problem was that there was a positive epidemic of narcissism, encouraged by commercial manipulation and by the shallow values of Hollywood films. And interestingly enough, the real growth area was male narcissism.
Alexander McCall Smith
#80. How remarkable it was, she thought, that we managed to anchor ourselves at all in this world, and that we did so by giving ourselves names and linking those names with places and other people.
Alexander McCall Smith
#81. Violins sang, brass crowed, while bassoons, she felt, rumbled according to a Richter scale all of their own. Charlie
Alexander McCall Smith
#82. People don't talk about mercy very much these days - it has a rather old-fashioned ring to it. but it exists and its power is quite extraordinary
Alexander McCall Smith
#84. Sociopaths are attracted to politics because the see it as a sphere in which you can be ruthless and step all over people. That fact that some politicians can tell such awful lies is another example of sociopathy. Sociopaths lie - they see nothing wrong with it.
Alexander McCall Smith
#85. Every man has a map in his heart of his own country and that the heart will never allow you to forget this map. (p. 18)
Alexander McCall Smith
#86. Mma Ramotswe reflected on how easy it was to find oneself committed to a course of action simply because one lacked the courage to say no.
Alexander McCall Smith
#87. Rich people are just people," said Mma Ramotswe. "I have not met a rich person yet who isn't just the same as us. Being happy or unhappy has nothing to do with being rich.
Alexander McCall Smith
#88. The physical world - the world of stone and brick - is indifferent to our suffering, to our dramas, she thought. Even a battlefield can be peaceful, can be a place for flowers to grow, for children to play; the memories, the sadness, are within us, not part of the world about us.
Alexander McCall Smith
#89. She believed in getting as much use as possible from everything, and thought that as long as machinery, or anything else, could be cajoled into operation, it should be kept; to do otherwise, she thought, was wasteful.
Alexander McCall Smith
#90. 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.
Alexander McCall Smith
#91. 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.
Alexander McCall Smith
#94. 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
#95. You are innocent in your heart," she had said to him. "That is the most important thing." And he had thought about that for a few moments before shaking his head and saying, "I would like that to be true, Mma, but it is not. It is what other people think. That is the most important thing.
Alexander McCall Smith
#97. For each of us, she thought, there is out completeness in another. Whether we find it, or it finds us, or it eludes all finding is a matter of moral luck.
Alexander McCall Smith
#98. Remember the Hottentots?" asked James. "They've become the Khoi now, which means that the Germans will have to retire that wonderful word of theirs, Hottentotenpotentatenstantenattentater, which means, as you know, one who attacks the aunt of a Hottentot potentate.
Alexander McCall Smith
#99. She wouldn't disapprove of people who gave up philosophy or literary theory to do ordinary things." "Maybe not," mused Maggie. "If we eat pies, then we should never, not for one moment, look down on the making of them.
Alexander McCall Smith
#100. To use strong language, she thought, was a sign of bad temper and lack of concern for others. Such people were not clever or bold simply because they used such language; each time they opened their mouths they proclaimed I am a person who is poor in words.
Alexander McCall Smith
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