top of page
.png){kind=small}
"So it was perfectly possible that there were men who liked shopping, men who understood exactly what it was all about, but Mma Ramotwe had yet to meet such a man. Maybe they existed elsewhere - in France, perhaps - but they did not seem to be much in evidence in Botswana."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Observation quotes
"When you enter a room, a social situation, or a business meeting, be mindful of cues; read between the lines to better understand people and events. What do these things tell you?"
"You wouldn't recognize a good thing if it was spanking your ass."
"Even at a time like this, the street is bright enough and filled with people coming and going-people with places to go and people with no place to go; people with a purpose and people with no purpose; people trying to hold time back and people trying to urge it forward."
"People seem to overlook an old man losing his mind if he occasionally made light of it."
"Evening had turned the sky a deep persimmon. The remaining sunlight enriched the colors of the ubiquitous flowers and foliage to even greater vibrancy, as if the saturation filter had been notched up several levels.Caleb noted all this in passing as he strode deliberately forward. He didn't know how he was going to do this, only that he had to make the attempt."
"The limitation prompting folly " was an attitude of superiority so dense as to be impenetrable."
"Looking up at [the sky], I think about the October evening world, where 'people' must be going about their lives. Beneath that pale autumn light, they must be walking down streets, going to the store for things, preparing dinner, boarding trains for home. And they think--if they think at all--that these things are too obvious to think about, just as I used to do (or not do)."
"As a teacher of fourth-graders in a public school, where corporal punishement was not allowed, she had years of violence stored up and was, truth be told, sort of enjoying letting it out on Kona, who she felt could have been the poster child for the failure of public education."
"Meditation is a state, often defined as deep dreamless sleep awake. But, in the same way that you cannot sleep on demand, you cannot meditate on demand - that is, you can't reach the state instantly in the same way that you can raise your right hand. The practices preceding meditation are relaxation, stillness and mental focus. Those are all things you can do. They are the preparation. Then, if you the circumstances are right, you can transition from the waking to the meditative state."
"You would be much amused with the animals round the ranch."
Explore more quotes by Alexander McCall Smith
"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."
"The problem, of course, was that people did not seem to understand the difference between right and wrong. They needed to be reminded about this, because if you left it to them to work out for themselves, they would never bother. They would just find out what was best for them, and then they would call that the right thing."
"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."
"Memories of that which we have lost are curious things - weeks, months, even years may pass without recollection of them and then, quite suddenly, something will remind us of a lost friend, or of a favourite possession that has been mislaid or destroyed, and then we think: Yes, that is what I have had and I have no longer."
"Anybody can lose,' cautioned Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. 'You need to remember that every time you win."
"Mr Mandela, who had given his whole life for justice and had never once thought of himself. How unlike these people were modern politicians, who thought only of power and tricks."
"The previously unloved may find it hard to believe that they are now loved; that is such a miracle, they feel; such a miracle."
"If she was going to remain an engaged lady, then she would make the most of it, and one of the ways to do this would be to enjoy her free time."
"Regular maps have few surprises: their contour lines reveal where the Andes are, and are reasonably clear. More precious, though, are the unpublished maps we make ourselves, of our city, our place, our daily world, our life; those maps of our private world we use every day; here I was happy, in that place I left my coat behind after a party, that is where I met my love; I cried there once, I was heartsore; but felt better round the corner once I saw the hills of Fife across the Forth, things of that sort, our personal memories, that make the private tapestry of our lives."
bottom of page