Alexander McCall Smith - The Sunday Philosophy Club (2004)

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Our minds can come up with the most entertaining possibilities, if we let them. But most of the time, we keep them under far too close a check.

Alexander McCall Smith
And that, in a way, was the burden of being a philosopher: one knew what one had to do, but it was so often the opposite of what one really wanted to do.

Alexander McCall Smith
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
The sentiment sounded trite, but then didn't most good sentiments sound trite? It was hard to make goodness – and good people – sound interesting. Yet the good were worthy of note, of course, because they battled and that battle was a great story, whereas the evil were evil because of moral laziness, or weakness, and that was ultimately a dull and uninteresting affair.

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

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