Alexander McCall Smith Quotes
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What else does a detective agency really need? Detective agencies rely on human intuition and intelligence, both of which Mma Ramotswe had in abundance. No inventory would ever include those, of course.
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Old friends, like old shoes, are comfortable. But old shoes, unlike old friends, tend not to be supportive: it is easier to stumble and sprain an ankle while wearing a pair of old shoes than it is in new shoes, with their less yielding leather.
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Each of us is born into our own mysteries…but the mystery of another might just take us in and embrace us. And then what a sense of homecoming, of belonging!
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The thought of Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni nursing secret, unfulfilled ambitions saddened Mma Ramotswe, as did the thought of people wanting something very much indeed and not getting the thing they yearned for. When we dismiss or deny the hopes of others, she thought, we forget that they, like us, have only one chance in this life.
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’They are a very great boon to mankind, dentists,’ said Isabel. ‘And I’m not sure that we are grateful enough to them. I’m not sure that we even bother to thank them.’ She paused. Were there any statues of dentists? She thought not. And yet there should be.
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It’s very important to be able to accept things, you know. Gracious acceptance is an art – an art which most of never bother to cultivate. We think that we have to learn how to give, but we forget about accepting things, which can be much harder than giving.
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Every small wrong, every minor act of cruelty, every act of petty bullying was symbolic of a greater wrong. And if we ignored these small things, then did it not blunt our outrage over the larger wrongs?
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But we make such mistakes all the time, all through our lives. Wisdom, I suppose, is seeing this and acting upon it before it is too late. But it is often too late, isn’t it? – and those things that we should have said are unsaid, and remain unsaid for ever.
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It's like people inviting you to come along to a church service or an amateur orchestra. They're hoping that you'll join. People are recruiters at heart, you know. It makes them feel more comfortable to see the ranks of their particular enthusiasm swelling.
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One might expect bad behaviour from existentialists – indeed that was what existentialism was all about, was it not? – but to find this happening on one’s own doorstep was a shock.
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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.
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It would be wonderful to have a guru; it would be like having a social worker or a personal trainer, not that people who had either of these necessarily appreciated the advice they received.
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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.
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We think the world is ours forever, but we are little more than squatters.
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Our minds can come up with the most entertaining possibilities, if we let them. But most of the time, we keep them under far too close a check.
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The people with the strong, brave exteriors are just as weak and vulnerable as the rest of us. And of course they never admit to their childish practices, their moments of weakness or absurdity, and then the rest of us think that’s how it should be.
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Things can end badly, as they sometimes do in life. But if they do, then we know that something is wrong, just as we know it when a piece of music doesn’t resolve itself properly at the end. We know that. We just do. And so we prefer harmony.
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The maid glanced at her employer. 'Oh, you have heard of me,' she said. 'I am glad that he speaks of me. I would not like to think that nobody speaks of me.' 'No,' said Mma Ramotswe. 'It is better to be spoken of than not to be spoken of. Except sometimes, that is.'
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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.