Quotes from Alexander McCall Smith

The recipe for each child is just for that child, even if it is the same mother and father.

If A says to B please tell C something, does B have any obligation to do so? It would depend, thought Isabel, on whether B had agreed to take on the duty of passing on the message. If he had not, then a liberal individualist philosopher would probably say that he did not have to exert himself. That was liberal individualism, of course, with which Isabel did not always agree. Don't go swimming with a liberal individualist, she told herself; he might not save you if you started to drown.

I have the luxury, I suppose, of being self-employed. But I know what it's like to apply for jobs.

Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less…" She thought: when will it come—that moment when that no longer resonates with people too tired of others and their demands, too exhausted to open their doors to those in need, too overwhelmed by the scale of humanity in all its billions to value individual human life.

Or was it that people, for all they wished their friends well, never actually wished them that well?

Most people try," said Ulf. It was something that he reminded himself of regularly, as it made all the difference in your dealing with people. If you bore in mind that they were trying their best, it became that much easier to be tolerant.

Drawing is to art as grammar is to language: you can speak without any knowledge of grammar, but do not expect to be understood, and certainly do not expect to become a poet.

He decided there was a lot to be said for bulldozers. They were honest vehicles—honest in the sense that they did not purport to be anything other than what they were.

People tried to understand, and many did, but not everybody could make the imaginative leap that landed one in the position of another person, in their shoes, in their very garments, looking out on the world with their eyes, feeling what went on inside their hearts; being made to cry by the things that made them want to cry. That was easy in theory, but hard in practice. They pretended to understand, but when it came down to it, many simply did not.

That sent her friends to the dictionary, which gave her additional satisfaction. To dispatch one's friends to a dictionary from time to time is one of the more sophisticated pleasures of life, but it is one that must be indulged in sparingly: to do it too often may result in accusations of having swallowed one's own dictionary, which is not a compliment, whichever way one looks at it.

I'm very glad that Matthew phoned," he said. "I've been out of touch, you know. It's like that out here. You get caught up in your own life and you forget about family back home.

Why, thought Ulf, should a grown man seek to defraud a gullible fish? Here is a tasty morsel—no! A concealed hook! Foolish, foolish fish...

We all know that it is women who take the decisions, but we have to let men think that the decisions are theirs. It is an act of kindness on the part of women.

Don't be excessively judgmental, if you like, but always–always–be prepared to make a judgment. Otherwise you'll go through life not really knowing what you mean.

she sipped at her 1st cup of red bush tea, not in any hurry to do whatever it was that she had to do next. That, of course, is always a good time to think - when you know that you are going to have to do something, but you know that you do not have to do it just yet.

If a person acts out of character, then there's one thing you can be sure of: there is something wrong. I have seen this so many times I have lost count.

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.

A society that undermined its teachers and their authority only dug away at its own sure foundations.

It is because you are generous in spirit; and may I be like that; may I become like you—which unrealistic wish, to become the other, is such a true and revealing symptom of love, its most obvious clue, its unmistakable calling card.

That, she imagined, was because he had been given the eyes to see things, as we are given the eyes of those who have gone before us, and can see the world in the way in which they saw it.

She should not have taken any of these people at face value. She had been naive. But this conclusion, she realized, pointed unambiguously in the direction of cynicism. And she would not be a cynic. It was better to be naive, much better.

I have warned you. Glasgow is full of Campbells.

old-fashioned, gentle Scottish physician, unmoved by the considerations of profit and personal gain that could so disfigure medicine. That doctors should consider themselves businessmen was, Isabel had always felt, a moral tragedy for medicine.

People had to be left to make their own mistakes, even if the rest of us could see quite clearly the dangers that lay ahead.