Alexander McCall Smith: Trending quotes

“We all know that it is women who make the decisions, but we have to let men think that the decisions are theirs. It is an act of kindness on the part of women.”

“It is sometimes easier to be happy if you don't know everything.”

“She was made for untidy rooms and rumpled beds.”

“That of all people, it should be him; that took her aback. That the heart should settle on somebody like him; that surprised her. But she was so certain about it, so certain.”

“Be content with who you are and where you are, and do whatever you can do to bring to others such contentment, and joy, and understanding that you have managed to find yourself.”

“A life without stories would be no life at all. And stories bound us, did they not, one to another, the living to the dead, people to animals, people to the land?”

“Do not act meanly, do not be unkind, because the time for setting things right may pass before your heart changes course.
Isabel Dalhousie”

“But don't we often lie to people we love, or not tell them things, precisely because we love them?”

“Mma Ramotswe sighed. 'We are all tempted, Mma. We are all tempted when it comes to cake.'

That is true,' said Mma Potokwane sadly. 'There are many temptations in this life, but cake is probably one of the biggest of them.”

“That is the problem with governments these days. They want to do things all the time; they are always very busy thinking of what things they can do next. That is not what people want. People want to be left alone to look after their cattle.”

“every man has a map in his heart of his own country and that the heart will never allow you to forget this map. (p. 18)”

“… great things may come from moments of nothingness.”

“If your ceiling should fall down, then you have lost a room, but gained a courtyard. Think of it that way.”

“There are many women whose lives would be immeasurably improved by widowhood, but one should not always point that out.”

“Why is it that there are always these problems and misunderstandings between men and women? Surely it would have been better if God had made only one sort of person, and the children had come by some other means, with the rain perhaps.”

“There is room in history for all of us.”

“I am just a tiny person in Africa, but there is a place for me, and for everybody, to sit down on this earth and touch it and call it their own.”

“There is plenty of work for love to do.”

“You are a lucky lady to be marrying a man who can fix things. Most husbands just break things.”