top of page
.png){kind=small}
"Waiting in the reception area, she had flicked through a news magazine that had been lying on the table for clients to read while waiting for their appointment. On the cover there had been a picture of a well-known politician, a man famous for his rudeness and aggression. She had looked at the eyes--the piercing, accusing eyes, and had seen only an impenetrable, defensive anger. Nothing--no forced smiles nor rehearsed protestation of concern, could cancel out the cold selfishness of those eyes."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Psychology quotes
"No one wants to admit we're addicted to music. That's just not possible. No one's addicted to music and television and radio. We just need more of it, more channels, a larger screen, more volume. We can't bear to be without it, but no, nobody's addicted. We could turn it off anytime we wanted. I fit a window frame into a brick wall. With a little brush, the size for fingernail polish, I glue it. The window is the size of a fingernail. The glue smells like hair spray. The smell tastes like oranges and gasoline."
"We have to know ourselves to know where we end and another person begins, and we have to develop the skills to navigate the space between us. Or else we will seek wholeness through false means that honor neither us nor those we love."
"In a way, being an addict is very proactive. A good addiction takes the guesswork out of death. There is such a thing as planning your getaway."
"We live with the key purpose of receiving the approval of those around us because we don't know who we are in reality."
"Suicide is very contagious."
"Help me give up my addiction to Hope."
"To be filled with fear is to open to the wrong way."
"It is easier to be a mere performer and not to make serious decisions, to live with an assistance of someone else's mind and obey someone else's command when you are a person of victim mentality."
"A man who's susceptible to panic attack is a man full of worry."
"A woman eats to feed her pussy." Meaning: Anything we do to excess is in compensation for not getting a minimum amount of sexual gratification."
Explore more quotes by Alexander McCall Smith
"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."
"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."
"Isabel is looking at several collections of research journals. 'She would understand the issues if she chose to open one of the volumes, but she knew that there were conversations within which she would never have the time to participate in. And that, of course, was the problem with any large collection of books, whether in a library or a bookshop: one might feel intimidated by the fact that there was simply too many to read and not know where to start."
"Morality is for everybody, and this means that the views of more than one person are needed to create it. That was what made the modern morality, with its emphasis on individuals and the working out of an individual position, so weak. If you gave people the chance to work out their morality, then they would work out the version which was easiest for them and which allowed them to do what suited them for as much of the time as possible. That, in Mma Ramotswe's view, was simple selfishness, whatever grand name one gave to it."
"Mma Ramotswe reflected on how easy it was to find oneself committed to a course of action simply because one lacked the courage to say no."
"We must love those with whom we live and work, and love them for all their failings, manifest and manifold though they be."
"There were some people, it seemed, who were incapable of being pleasant about anything. Of course, the cars that such people drove tended to be difficult as well. Nice cars have nice drivers; bad cars have bad drivers. A person's gearbox revealed everything that you could want to know about that person, thought Mr J.L.B. Matekoni."
bottom of page