Alexander McCall Smith Quotes
You should have seen him, ” she said. “A real ladies’ man. Stuff in his hair. Dark glasses. Fancy shoes. He had no idea how funny he looked. I much prefer men with ordinary shoes and honest trousers.
If we let the men talk about them and decide them, then suddenly we wake up and find out that the men have made all the decisions, and these decisions all suit men.
Men, she thought, were odd about their clothes: they liked to wear the same things until they became defeated and threadbare.
He will be a small man inside, " said Mma Ramotswe. "He will feel small and unimportant. That is why he needs to put ladies down, Mma. Men who are big inside never feel the need to do that.
Men can be teenagers until well into their twenties. That is well known
If we treated others with the consideration that one would give to those who only had a few days to live, then we would be kinder, at least.
It was a voice that you felt you had to listen to—or you ignored at your peril.
To lose your own language was like forgetting your mother, and as sad, in a way.
There are many sadnesses in the hearts of men who are far away from their countries.
It's because there are too many people who want to stop us having fun. That's the reason.
It was always a mistake, she thought, to dwell on the cause of one's anger.
There is a tidal wave of ignorance, Mma Ramotswe. It is a great tidal wave and it will drown all of us if we are not careful.
I said to him that Zululand sounded fine, but that every man has a map in his heart of his own country and that the heart will never allow you to forget this map.
we must love those with whom we live and work, and love them for all their failings, manifest and manifold though they be.
What we have, we all must lose—that applied to everything, even to that which we thought we had the greatest right. We were tenants of this earth—nothing more.
And if you do see any pirates, I don't want you to pick up any rough manners from them. Do you understand?
…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.
There was a great deal of progress being made, right under their noses, particularly in Africa, and this progress was good. Life was much harder for tyrants than it had been before.
Antonia was very conscious of the corrosive power of envy and felt that it was this emotion, more than any other, which lay behind human unhappiness. People did not realise how widespread envy was.
...it must be odd to have no ambition, not to want something more.
It is hard, she thought, it is hard for us to think of people who dislike us because none of us, in our heart, believes that we deserve the hatred of others.
It was curious how some people had a highly developed sense of guilt, she thought, while others had none.
That was the trouble with people in general: they were surprisingly unrealistic in their expectations.
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.
The only thing that makes me sad is that I shall be leaving Africa when I die. I love Africa, which is my mother and my father. When I am dead, I shall miss the smell of Africa
Africa had a way of coming back and simply covering everything up again.
Anybody can lose, ' cautioned Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. 'You need to remember that every time you win.
It was easy to make a difference to other people’s lives, so easy to change the little room in which people lived their life.
Tolerance was like one of those soothing creams—it drew out inflammation, it did away with the pain.
And then the second thing you have to do is go and see your son. That is a duty of love, Andrew. It's as simple as that. A duty of love. Do you understand what I'm saying to you?
I shall go and sit under a tree…. Which tree, Mma?... Oh, there are many trees in this life, she said. It does not matter which tree you choose, as long as you choose the right one.