Alexander McCall Smith Quotes

62 Sourced Quotes

It was easy to be moral when that was the way you felt anyway. The hard bit about morality was making yourself feel the opposite of what you really felt.

Alexander McCall Smith
How many of us are happy to be exactly where we are at any moment?...only the completely happy think that they are in the correct place.

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

Alexander McCall Smith
Small things may be important to us; to be a sometime anything is sometimes something.

Alexander McCall Smith
Lou knew that joy unshared was a halved emotion, just as sadness and loss, when borne alone, were often doubled.

Alexander McCall Smith
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.

Alexander McCall Smith
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.

Alexander McCall Smith
When you allow people to do what they wish, then that is what they do. They stop doing the things they need to do.

Alexander McCall Smith
We are all tempted, Mma. We are all tempted when it comes to cake.

Alexander McCall Smith
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. That's how most people thought.

Alexander McCall Smith
Whatever Scotland was, it was not a matriarchy; whereas the United States was a profoundly matriarchal society - and much more feminine than would be suggested by all that male bravado. That was a front, and a misleading one at that; underneath the male swagger lay a passive acceptance of female dominance - a fact not always appreciated by outsiders.

Alexander McCall Smith
There are old mycologists and there are bold mycologists, but there are no old, bold mycologists.

Alexander McCall Smith
I have always taken the view that one should never hold against a man anything he says after twelve o'clock at night or after a glass or two of anything.

Alexander McCall Smith
Do not take on a traditionally built person unless you are prepared for a heavyweight bout.

Alexander McCall Smith
A wedding was a strange ceremony, she thought, with all those formal words, those solemn vows made by one to another; whereas the real question that should be put to the two people involved was a very simple one. Are you happy with each other? was the only question that should be asked; to which they both should reply, preferably in unison, Yes.

Alexander McCall Smith
International business, once allowed to stalk uncontrolled, killed the local, the small, the quirky.

Alexander McCall Smith
None of us knows how we will cope with snakes until the moment arises, and then most of us find out that we do not do it very well.

Alexander McCall Smith
Reality television, which turned its eye on people who were doing nothing but being themselves, was the perfect expression of this trend [of narcissism]. Let's look at ourselves, it said. Aren't we fascinating?

Alexander McCall Smith
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
But don't we often lie to people we love, or not tell them things, precisely because we love them?

Alexander McCall Smith
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
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
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
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 maid glanced at her employer. "Oh, you have heard of me," she said. "I am glad that he speaks of me. I would not like to think that nobody speaks of me." "No," said Mma Ramotswe. "It is better to be spoken of than not to be spoken of. Except sometimes, that is."

Alexander McCall Smith
Do you realise that people die of boredom in London suburbs? It's the second biggest cause of death amongs the English in general. Sheer boredom...

Alexander McCall Smith
We think the world is ours forever, but we are little more than squatters.

Alexander McCall Smith
We all know that it is women who take 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.

Alexander McCall Smith
'They are a very great boon to mankind, dentists,' said Isabel. 'And I'm not sure that we are grateful enough to them. I'm not sure that we even bother to thank them.' She paused. Were there any statues of dentists? She thought not. And yet there should be.

Alexander McCall Smith
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?

Alexander McCall Smith