603 Quotes by Alexander McCall Smith

He said: What is patriotism but love of the food one ate as a child?

People talk of the wrench of parting, and that, he felt, was exactly what it was. Take a metal object off a magnet and one would experience that – there was the draw, the tug, the flow of the bond even through the air, and then the sudden detaching as separation occurred. That was what it was like. That was human parting. You felt it; you felt the separation, just as you would feel the rending of tissue being pulled apart.

She meant it, and as she spoke, she thought how strange it was that we so very rarely said complimentary things to our friends, and how easy it was to do so, and how it made the world seem a less harsh place.

Make sure that the road is always clear for your enemy to leave’?

In such a way is freedom of thought lost... By small cuts. By small acts of disapproval. By a thousand discouragements of spirit.

And a coffee cup, as we all know, is not something that it pays to look into if one is searching for meaning beyond meaning; coffee, in all its forms, looks murky and gives little comfort to one who hopes to see something in it. Unlike tea, which allows one to glimpse something of what lies beneath the surface, usually more tea.

Human history seems to me to be one long story of people sweeping down – or up, I suppose – replacing other people in the process.

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.

Well,” said Mma Ramotswe, “I have felt that anger. I felt it when I saw that the van had gone. I felt it a bit in the truck on the way back. But what is the point of anger now, Mma? I don’t think that anger will help us.” Mma Makutsi sighed. “You are right about anger,” she said. “There is no point in it.