Alexander McCall Smith quotes

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)
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. View quote
Alexander McCall Smith
We think the world is ours forever, but we are little more than squatters. View quote
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. View quote
Alexander McCall Smith
It would be wonderful to have a guru; it would be like having a social worker or a personal trainer, not that people who had either of these necessarily appreciated the advice they received. View quote
Alexander McCall Smith
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. View quote
Alexander McCall Smith
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. View quote
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! View quote
Alexander McCall Smith
It's very important to be able to accept things, you know. Gracious acceptance is an art – an art which most of never bother to cultivate. We think that we have to learn how to give, but we forget about accepting things, which can be much harder than giving. View quote
Alexander McCall Smith
It is sometimes easier to be happy if you don't know everything. View quote
Alexander McCall Smith
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)
There is room in history for all of us. View quote
Alexander McCall Smith
If your ceiling should fall down, then you have lost a room, but gained a courtyard. Think of it that way. View quote
Alexander McCall Smith
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. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
Alexander McCall Smith
Special things have a way of surviving. View quote
Alexander McCall Smith
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! View quote
Alexander McCall Smith
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. View quote
Alexander McCall Smith
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)
One might expect bad behaviour from existentialists – indeed that was what existentialism was all about, was it not? – but to find this happening on one's own doorstep was a shock. View quote
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? View quote
Alexander McCall Smith
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. View quote
Alexander McCall Smith
Things can end badly, as they sometimes do in life. But if they do, then we know that something is wrong, just as we know it when a piece of music doesn't resolve itself properly at the end. We know that. We just do. And so we prefer harmony. View quote
Alexander McCall Smith