Alisha

“Angus turned to Domenica. "This view always makes me feel sad. I don't know why, but it does." He drew in his breath, savouring the freshness of the air. Freshly mown grass was upon it, and the smell of lavender, too, from Elspeth's kitchen garden. "Well, perhaps not sad--more wistful, perhaps, which is one notch below actual sadness.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Love in the Time of Bertie

“But Domenica thought: I really would like things to be forever. I would like to be able to sit at this table once a week, perhaps, with these friends. I would like to talk about the things we talk about, the small things, whatever happened in the world. I would like to wake up in the morning and not think that things were getting worse. I would like not to have to listen to the exchange of insults between politicians. I would like to hear of people co-operating with one another and helping others and bringing succour and comfort to the needy and... and I would like not to think that we were still in the seventeenth century, as divided amongst ourselves as they were at that time, pitted against each other, with one vision of the good battling another, and people despising others for their opinions.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Love in the Time of Bertie

“They talked about the sorts of things they liked to talk about when there were no important decisions to be made and when the conversation could wander comfortably along uncluttered shores.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Joy and Light Bus Company

“I watched too, with that sort of lonely delight--the one shadow upon it being that it is so lonely--with which all one's life one is accustomed to watch beautiful and vanishing things.”
― Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, An Unsentimental Journey Through Cornwall