Shane > Shane's Quotes

“It is sometimes easier to be happy if you don't know everything.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls

“The telling of a story, like virtually everything in this life, was always made all the easier by a cup of tea.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Miracle at Speedy Motors

“Do not act meanly, do not be unkind, because the time for setting things right may pass before your heart changes course.
Isabel Dalhousie”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Careful Use of Compliments

“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.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Double Comfort Safari Club

“There is plenty of work for love to do.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Tea Time for the Traditionally Built

“...how sorry she felt for white people, who couldn't do any of this (sit talking with friends and growing melons) and who were always dashing around and worrying themselves over things that were going to happen anyway. What use was it having all the money if you could never sit still or just watch your cattle, and yet they did not know it. Every so often you met a white person who understood, who realized how things really were; but these people were few and far between and the other white people often treated them with suspicion. ”
― Alexander Mccall Smith, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

“...great things may come from moments of nothingness.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Miracle at Speedy Motors

“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, In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

“(Mma Ramotswe thinking about what her father taught her…)

“Having the right approach to life was a great gift in this life….Do not complain about your life. Do not blame others for things that you have brought upon yourself. 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…You can do that in the company of an old friend—you can close your eyes and think of the land that gave you life and breath, and of all the reasons why you are glad that you are there, with the people you know, with the people you love.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Double Comfort Safari Club

“You are a lucky lady to be marrying a man who can fix things. Most husbands just break things.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls

“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 , The Full Cupboard of Life

“We shall change all that...because it is possible to change the world, if one is determined enough, and if one sees with sufficient clarity just what has to be changed.”
― alexander mccall smith, The Kalahari Typing School for Men

“We are born to talk to other people, ... we are born to be sociable and to sit together with others in the shade of the acacia tree and talk about things that happened the day before. We were not born to sit in kitchens by ourselves, with nobody to chat to." Mma Ramotswe”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Tea Time for the Traditionally Built

“She had so much love to give - she had always felt that - and now there was somebody to whom she could give this love, and that, she knew, was good; for that is what redeems us, that is what makes our pain and sorrow bearable - this giving of love to others, this sharing of the heart.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

“...is under active consideration.”
― Alexander McCall Smith

“Remember the Hottentots?" asked James. "They've become the Khoi now, which means that the Germans will have to retire that wonderful word of theirs, Hottentotenpotentatenstantenattentater, which means, as you know, one who attacks the aunt of a Hottentot potentate.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The World According to Bertie

“The doctor drummed the fingers of his left hand on the edge of the table, a strange gesture which suggested, Isabel thought, an impatient temperment. Perhaps he had been obliged to listen too long to those whom he did not consider his intellectual equal, exhausted patients with long-running complaints, unable to put their views succinctly. Some doctors could become like that, she thought, just as some lawyers could; prolonged exposure to flawed humanity could create a sense of superiority if one was not careful--and perhaps he was not.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday

“The Morning After Coffee Bar was different from the mass-produced coffee bars that had mushroomed on every street almost everywhere, a development which presaged the flattening effects of globalisation; the spreading, under a cheerful banner, of a sameness that threatened to weaken and destroy all sense of place.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Love Over Scotland

“There were few other passengers: a man in an overcoat, his head sunk against his chest; a couple with arms around each other, impervious to their surroundings; and a teenage boy with a black scarf wound round his neck, Zorro-style. Isabel smiled to herself: a microcosm of our condition, she thought. Loneliness and despair; love and its self-absorption; and sixteen, which was a state all its own.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Sunday Philosophy Club

“She felt that she had revealed something to Cat, and with revealing something about oneself there always comes a sense of lightening of the load that we all carry; the load of being ourselves.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Right Attitude to Rain

“We like to think that we plan what happens to us, but it is chance, surely, that lies behind so many of the great events of our lives -- the meeting with the person with whom we are destined to spend the rest of our days, the receiving of a piece of advice whic influences our choice of career, the spotting of a particular house for sale; all of these may be put down to pur chance, and yet they govern how our lives work out and how happy--or unhappy--we were going to be.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday

“Chance; pure chance. But chance was a dull explanation because it denied the possibility of the paranormal, and people were often disappointed by dull explanations. Mystery and the unknown were far more exciting because they suggested that our world was not quite as prosaic as we feared it might be. Yet we had to adjure those temptations because they lead to a world of darkness and fear. ”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Friends, Lovers, Chocolate