Quotes from Alexander McCall Smith

if you had no language, then what form did your thoughts take—if you thought at all? Of course you thought—she had never had any difficulty with accepting that—but how limited would your thoughts be in the absence of any words to express them?

There is plenty of work for love to do. That was a wonderful way of putting it, and she had told him that this could be the best possible motto for anybody to have.

If everybody is a villain, then nobody is a villain

That is why the artist will always be happy—no matter how the world treats him. If he knows that what he creates is good, then he can bear the indifference of others.

Some knowledge is a fish," she muttered. "Some is a serpent.

Computers change the way we deal with words," Dr. Macgregor continued. "They somehow unlock language in the mind. But they do so in a very particular way – they induce Ã¢â'¬Â¦ well, I suppose we should call it logorrhoea, a sort of verbal diarrhoea. The words come tumbling out and people feel they can go on and on. And they do. Poetry has to be much more disciplined, much more concise.

A man could be a hereditary ruler, or an elected president, but not be a gentleman, and that would show in his every deed. But if you had a leader who was a gentleman, with all that this meant, then you were lucky indeed.

There are roads to Damascus, she told herself. People travel on them.

Cattle had no vote, nor the words to express a view, but their feelings ranked above just about everything else in the country.

there were occasions on which talking about distressing things merely kept those things alive, whereas not talking about them, consigning them to the past, forgetting them, allowed one to think about things that were positive, things that made the world a bit better.

Ask anybody what their idea of heaven is, and the answer will reveal that person's soul.

Without imagination we find it more difficult to be good, because imagination enables us to understand the pain of others: destroy imagination and you destroyed empathy.

It was typical of so many rural French restaurants, with its air of quiet assurance, a sense of being what it was and nothing more.

just like the affairs of the adult world--complicated rules and a history.

Skepticism had its place, but we should not lose sight of the possibility that some beliefs were both necessary and beneficial--a belief in human goodness being a prime example of this. There were plenty of grounds to doubt human goodness; but if one ceased to believe in it, then we would lose the comfort of trust. And people needed their scraps of comfort in this world if they were to be able to deal with hardship and disappointment.

Families come in different ways... sometimes they are given to you, but sometimes you find them yourself, unexpectedly, as you go through life.

they would just have to make the best of the situation. When there were things that you could not change, then there was a strong case for accepting things as they were and working from there.

The world was an imperfect place--as the events of the last few days had demonstrated--but within that vale of tears there were many sites and times of quietude and contentment, and this place and this moment on the veranda was one such.

microbial resistance to antibiotics…

Women always had private business to raise with men [...] There was always something going on in the background—some plotting or mulling over some slight or lack of attention, quite unintended, of course, but noted and filed away for subsequent scrutiny. And much of the time men would be unaware of it, until it all came out in a torrent of recrimination and tears.

been able to find out what the really big questions are.

A problem articulated was a problem halfway to being solved.

There was no point in telling somebody not to cry, she had always thought; indeed there were times when you should do exactly the opposite, when you should urge people to cry, to start the healing that sometimes only tears can bring. But if there was a place for tears of relief, there might even be a place for tears of pride[.]

clichéd in their repetition and their superficiality, but part of an identity that saved us from feeling utterly lonely and detached, mere passengers on a circular rock spinning through space.