Top 100 Alexander Smith Quotes
#1. 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
#5. Remember that, she said to herself; remember that in your dealings with others - they may be dying.
Alexander McCall Smith
#7. She was, he reflected, one of his closest friends, in a rather curious, slightly old-fashioned way.
Alexander McCall Smith
#8. 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
#9. Sometimes the people who were closest to you were also those who were furthest away.
Alexander McCall Smith
#10. 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
#11. 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
#13. The truly great rest in the knowledge of their own deserts, nor seek the conformation of the world.
Alexander Smith
#14. Fame is but an inscription on a grave, and glory the melancholy blazon on a coffin lid.
Alexander Smith
#15. 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
#16. 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
#17. Violins sang, brass crowed, while bassoons, she felt, rumbled according to a Richter scale all of their own. Charlie
Alexander McCall Smith
#19. Looking forward into an empty year strikes one with a certain awe, because one finds therein no recognition. The years behind have a friendly aspect, and they are warmed by the fires we have kindled, and all their echoes are the echoes of our own voices.
Alexander Smith
#20. 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
#22. 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
#23. 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
#24. 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
#25. 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
#26. The recipe for each child is just for that child, even if it is the same mother and father.
Alexander McCall Smith
#27. Botswana is actually very peaceful. It's democratic. It never was in debt. They've been fortunate, they've had diamonds.
Alexander McCall Smith
#29. 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
#30. 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
#32. 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
#34. When you don't talk about something, then something will talk about itself for you.
Alexander McCall Smith
#35. 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
#37. The human heart, you see, Mma Ramotswe, is pretty much the same wherever one goes.
Alexander McCall Smith
#38. 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
#39. 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
#40. 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
#41. 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
#42. 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
#43. But who doesn't have a lot of unread books? It's nice, though, to know they are there.
Alexander McCall Smith
#44. 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
#46. There is nothing good in this world which time does not improve.
Alexander Smith
#47. To have to die is a distinction of which no man is proud.
Alexander Smith
#48. 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
#49. 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
#50. Bureaucracy was very rarely an obstruction, provided that one applied to it the insights of ordinary, everyday psychology
Alexander McCall Smith
#51. The spot of ground on which a man has stood is forever interesting to him.
Alexander Smith
#52. Trifles make up the happiness or the misery of human life.
Alexander Smith
#53. 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
#54. The Wookiee gambit.' he said with a smile. I didn't have a clue what he was talking about, but somewhere in my head a distant memory was forming. He raised an eyebrow. 'Christ, Alex, what have they done to your brain? You don't remember Star Wars?
Alexander Gordon Smith
#55. 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
#56. 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
#57. 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
#58. 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
#59. It's incredible how much stamina you can find when you're fighting and enemy in battle, even if that enemy is just in your imagination.
Alexander Gordon Smith
#60. Nobody enjoys being on display," said Isabel. But then she thought: Some do, and so she added, "Except actors. And narcissists.
Alexander McCall Smith
#61. 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
#62. 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
#63. 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
#64. 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
#65. 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
#67. 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
#68. 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
#69. 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
#70. 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
#72. 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
#73. 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
#74. 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
#76. 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
#77. You don't have friends in here, you'll soon come to understand that. You get attached to someone, then you'll just lose them. They'll get shanked or they'll jump or they'll be taken one night.
Alexander Gordon Smith
#79. 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
#80. 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
#81. If you do your fair day's work, you are certain to get your fair day's wage - in praise or pudding, whichever happens to suit your taste.
Alexander Smith
#84. 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
#85. 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
#87. 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
#88. If you wish to make a man look noble, your best course is to kill him. What superiority he may have inherited from his race, what superiority nature may have personally gifted him with, comes out in death.
Alexander Smith
#90. 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
#91. 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
#92. ... 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
#93. 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
#95. A man gazing on the stars is proverbially at the mercy of the puddles in the road.
Alexander Smith
#96. 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
#98. 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
#99. most dogs seemed contented enough, and often seemed rather happier than the humans attached to them.
Alexander McCall Smith
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