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"People don't talk about mercy very much these days-it has a rather old-fashioned ring to it. but it exists and its power is quite extraordinary."
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"But you can't just leave it at that!" said Anathema, pushing forward. "Think of all things you could do! Good things."Like what?" said Adam suspiciously."Well... you could bring all the whales back, to start with."He put his head on one side. "An' that'd stop people killing them?"She hesitated. It would have been nice to say yes."An' if people do start killing 'em, what would you ask me to do about 'em?" said Adam. "No. I reckon I'm getting the hang of this now. Once I start messing around like that, there'd be no stoppin' it. Seems to me, the only sensible thing is for people to know if they kill a whale, they've got a dead whale."
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Personal Development

"Religion [dharma] is that where there is no irreligion (adharma, immorality). Religion cannot exist where there is irreligion. There can be only one or the other. Behind every intention, there is either [the force of] religion or [the force of] irreligion."
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Personal Development

"We are all flawed and creatures of our times. Is it fair to judge us by the unknown standards of the future?"
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Personal Development

"Because sometimes you have to do something bad to do something good."
Author Name
Personal Development

"It is better to be slave to righteousness than slave to sin."
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Personal Development

"Never sacrifice what's right for what's convenient."
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Personal Development

"Any religion which demands death for other people is itself worthy of nothing less than it expects for others. In fact, it is probably long overdue."
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Personal Development

"I hate what you represent."... "Power without conviction." Isana replied, her tone lifeless, matter of fact. "Ambition without conscience. Decent folk suffer at the hands of those like you."
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Personal Development

"It is wickedness when you receive blessing and not giving blessing to people."
Author Name
Personal Development

"All those who are not straightforward (frank and forthright) in this world are full of deception."
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Personal Development
More

"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."
Life

"There was no point in telling somebody not to cry, she had always thought; indeed there were times when you should do exactly the opposite, when you should urge people to cry, to start the healing that sometimes only tears can bring. But if there was a place for tears of relief, there might even be a place for tears of pride."
Emotion

"She would not allow herself to remember how Note had treated her, and many others too, she suspected. She had forgiven him, yes, but she still did not like to remember. And perhaps a deliberate act of forgetting went along with forgiveness. You forgave, and then you said to yourself: Now I shall forget. Because if you did not forget, then your forgiveness would be tested, perhaps many times and in ways that you could not resist, and you might go back to anger, and to hating."
Forgiveness

"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."
Morality

"People don't talk about mercy very much these days-it has a rather old-fashioned ring to it. but it exists and its power is quite extraordinary."
Ethics

"To lose your own language was like forgetting your mother, and as sad, in a way."
Culture

"Everything, all those great things, had happened so far away--or so it seemed to [Mma Ramotswe] at the time. The world was made to sound as if it belonged to other people--to those who lived in distant countries that were so different from Botswana; that was before people had learned to assert that the world was theirs too, that what happened in Botswana was every bit as important, and valuable, as what happened anywhere else."
Awareness

"Men, she thought, were odd about their clothes: they liked to wear the same things until they became defeated and threadbare."
Observation

"That was the trouble with people in general: they were surprisingly unrealistic in their expectations."
Wisdom

"The ordinary people of Africa tended not to have room in their hearts for hatred. They were sometimes foolish, like people anywhere, but they did not bear grudges, as Mr Mandela had shown the world."
Society
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