603 Quotes by Alexander McCall Smith

Edinburgh used to be a haughty city.

If your ceiling should fall down, then you have lost a room, but gained a courtyard. Think of it that way.

The Culture of Complaint... We live in a culture of complaint because everyone is always looking for things to complain about. It's all tied in with the desire to blame others for misfortunes and to get some form of compensation into the bargain.

It is not enough just to identify a problem; there are plenty of people who were very skilled at pointing out what was wrong with the world, but they were not always so adept at working out how these things could be righted.

There is plenty of work for love to do.

There are many women whose lives would be immeasurably improved by widowhood, but one should not always point that out.

The point about love, the essential point, was that we loved what we loved. We did not choose. We just loved.

But don't we often lie to people we love, or not tell them things, precisely because we love them?

The good were worthy of note because they battled and that battle was a great story, whereas the evil were evil because of moral laziness, or weakness, and that was ultimately a dull and uninteresting affair.