Alexander McCall Smith: Trending quotes

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Alexander McCall Smith: 110 quotes1 like

“We find what we are looking for in life, her father had once said to her, which was true—if you look for happiness, you will see it; if you look for distrust and envy and hatred—all those things—you will find those too.”

Alexander McCall Smith book The Full Cupboard of Life

Source: The Full Cupboard of Life

“Traditional Botswana men like ladies who are more traditionally shaped. You and I, Mma. We remind men of how things used to be in Botswana before these modern-shaped ladies started to get men all confused.”

Alexander McCall Smith book The Full Cupboard of Life

Source: The Full Cupboard of Life

“The previously unloved may find it hard to believe that they are now loved; that is such a miracle, they feel; such a miracle.”

Alexander McCall Smith book The Good Husband of Zebra Drive

Source: The Good Husband of Zebra Drive

“Special things have a way of surviving.”

Alexander McCall Smith

Source: The World According to Bertie

“These men were like leeches; they sucked away at the goodness of a woman's heart until it was dry and all her love had been used up. That took a long time, he knew, because women seemed to have vast reservoirs of goodness in them”

Alexander McCall Smith The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

Source: The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

“Sorry about your sausage dog.”

Alexander McCall Smith book The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs

The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs

“It was true, of course, there was an abnormal level of narcissism in our society, but it did not do, he told himself, to spend too much time going on about it. Society changed. Narcissism was about love, ultimately, even if only love of self. And that was better than hate…. Did it matter if young men thought of fashion and hair gel when, not all that many years ago, their thoughts tended to turn to war and flags and the grim partisanship of the football terrace?”

Alexander McCall Smith book Espresso Tales

Espresso Tales, chapter 3.
The 44 Scotland Street series

“And how we become like our parents! How their scorned advice – based, we felt in our superiority, on prejudices and muddled folk wisdom – how their opinions are subsequently borne out by our own discoveries and sense of the world, one after one. And as this happens, we realise with increasing horror that proposition which we would never have entertained before: our mothers were right!”

Alexander McCall Smith

Love Over Scotland, chapter 68.
The 44 Scotland Street series

“These tests are designed to exclude others from the discourse - just as the word discourse is itself designed to do. These words are intended to say to people: this is a group thing. If you don't understand what we're talking about, you're not a member of the group. So, if you call this place the Canny Man's it shows that you belong, that you know what's what in Edinburgh. And that, you know, is what everybody wants, underneath. We want to belong.”

Alexander McCall Smith book Espresso Tales

Espresso Tales, chapter 1.
The 44 Scotland Street series

“The people with the strong, brave exteriors are just as weak and vulnerable as the rest of us. And of course they never admit to their childish practices, their moments of weakness or absurdity, and then the rest of us think that’s how it should be.”

Alexander McCall Smith

Love Over Scotland, chapter 17.
The 44 Scotland Street series

“The thought of Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni nursing secret, unfulfilled ambitions saddened Mma Ramotswe, as did the thought of people wanting something very much indeed and not getting the thing they yearned for. When we dismiss or deny the hopes of others, she thought, we forget that they, like us, have only one chance in this life.”

Alexander McCall Smith book Tea Time for the Traditionally Built

Tea Time for the Traditionally Built, chapter 11.
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series

“When we love others, we naturally want to talk about them, we want to show them off, like emotional trophies. We invest them with a power to do to others what they do to us; a vain hope, as the lovers of others are rarely of much interest to us. But we listen in patience, as friends must, and as Isabel now did, refraining from comment, other than to encourage the release of the story and the attendant confession of human frailty and hope.”

Alexander McCall Smith

Friends, Lovers, Chocolate, chapter 5.
The Sunday Philosophy Club series

“Every small wrong, every minor act of cruelty, every act of petty bullying was symbolic of a greater wrong. And if we ignored these small things, then did it not blunt our outrage over the larger wrongs?”

Alexander McCall Smith

The Unbearable Lightness of Scones, chapter 48.
The 44 Scotland Street series

“But we make such mistakes all the time, all through our lives. Wisdom, I suppose, is seeing this and acting upon it before it is too late. But it is often too late, isn’t it? – and those things that we should have said are unsaid, and remain unsaid for ever.”

Alexander McCall Smith

Love Over Scotland, chapter 96.
The 44 Scotland Street series

“It's like people inviting you to come along to a church service or an amateur orchestra. They're hoping that you'll join. People are recruiters at heart, you know. It makes them feel more comfortable to see the ranks of their particular enthusiasm swelling.”

Alexander McCall Smith book Espresso Tales

Espresso Tales, chapter 59.
The 44 Scotland Street series

“The woman shook her head. "Not easy," she said. "I believe that we have much less free will than we think. Quite frankly, we delude ourselves if we think that we are completely free. We aren’t. And that means if dear Bruce must have rather a lot of girlfriends, then there’s not very much he can do about it." Pat said nothing. Bruce had said nothing about the neighbours, and perhaps this was the reason.”

Alexander McCall Smith book 44 Scotland Street

44 Scotland Street, chapter 2.
The 44 Scotland Street series

“It is not enough just to identify a problem; there are plenty of people who were very skilled at pointing out what was wrong with the world, but they were not always so adept at working out how these things could be righted.”

Alexander McCall Smith book Tea Time for the Traditionally Built

Tea Time for the Traditionally Built, chapter 1.
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series

“Each of us is born into our own mysteries…but the mystery of another might just take us in and embrace us. And then what a sense of homecoming, of belonging!”

Alexander McCall Smith

Friends, Lovers, Chocolate, chapter 15.
The Sunday Philosophy Club series

“Any extreme political creed brought only darkness in the long run; it lit up nothing. The best politics were those of caution, tolerance and moderation, Angus maintained, but such politics were, alas, also very dull, and certainly moved nobody to poetry.”

Alexander McCall Smith

The Unbearable Lightness of Scones, chapter 30.
The 44 Scotland Street series

“Old friends, like old shoes, are comfortable. But old shoes, unlike old friends, tend not to be supportive: it is easier to stumble and sprain an ankle while wearing a pair of old shoes than it is in new shoes, with their less yielding leather.”

Alexander McCall Smith

The Unbearable Lightness of Scones, chapter 8.
The 44 Scotland Street series