Quotes About Community

Eating with others was different from just talking to them—it was an act of commitment, a recognition of shared humanity. We all share these physical needs, it said; we are brothers and sisters in our vulnerability.

There is no need to be unkind to people who are unhappy inside themselves. There is room for everyone. Everyone should be able to find somewhere on this earth to sit down.

we must love those with whom we live and work, and love them for all their failings, manifest and manifold though they be.

When you go home from work at the end of the day, you sit on your small veranda, watching the day turns to dusk, nursing a cup of redbush tea in your hands, and wonder what on earth you can possibly do to help. "The Saturday big tent wedding party " page 41

I'm glad you came," said Rob. "I like having lunch. I find it a much more sociable meal than dinner.

The poem had said something about being grateful for the small scale, for the local, for the minor things that gave meaning to life. And Angus was right: these things were being forgotten in the headlong rush into globalisation, which drained identity out of life, rendered it distant, impersonal.

Mma Ramotswe had expected no thanks for what she had done. You helped other people—you just did. Had her van broken down, then she would have hoped that somebody would have done the same for her, and she thought that they would.

She could turn away and say that they had nothing to do with her, or she could accept that they had somehow touched her skirt. ...we all had a skirt, and those who touched our skirt became our concern.

of being linked with each other, we have every temptation to be selfish and unmoved by others and by their plight. Our towns, our cities, our places become no more than hotels, with all that lack of intimacy that is a feature of hotels – strangers under one roof, no more. Well, we should not be strangers to one another. We

It was another of Mma Makutsi's odd statements—utterly unfounded in fact, Mma Ramotswe suspected, but not a point that she wished to argue. As far as she was concerned, if a chair was empty, then anybody should be welcome to sit in it. We should share our chairs, she felt. Maybe that was the real problem with the modern world—not enough of us were prepared to share our chairs.

We should be happy when people have chairs," he admonished. "We should be happy, even if we do not have a chair ourselves.

He is a good, kind man," said Mma Potokwane. "And such men are often too busy. I have noticed that round here too. That man I was talking to just then—one of our groundsmen—he is like that. He is so kind that everybody asks him to do everything. We had a bad-tempered man working here once and he had nothing to do because nobody, apart form myself, of course, had the courage to ask him to do anything.

We should not be too surprised by the kindness of strangers, as it is always there.

something just because everybody

A new master's course was being offered in community relations. He read the short paragraph extolling the usefulness and topicality of this course. He wondered whether it would help, or whether it was no more than an aspiration—a course in what might be, but wasn't. But at least they were trying; at least they were not instituting a new master's programme in cynicism and indifference.

They meet these women who hang about in bars waiting for other women's husbands. This city is full of women like that." She looked at Alice, and there flowed between them a brief current of understanding. All women in Botswana were the victims of the fecklessness of men.

We become the people we live with. Imperceptibly at first, but with a certain inevitability, we become the other.

people who don't show friendliness towards others can hardly complain about others not showing friendliness to them.

the human world, he reflected, was divided into little clusters of people—tiny tribes, small groups of friends, families—and if you belonged to only a few of these, then your life was circumscribed.

It's important to be able to accept,' Brother Gregory said. He glanced at Bruce in an encouraging way. There was no hint of reproach in his voice; just warmth. 'Some of us find that hard – I know that – but graciousness in accepting the help of others

You had to look after other people because if you did not, then the world was a cold and lonely place, a place where, if you stumbled, there would be no hand to pull you to your feet.

It would be good if there could be an end to need in this world; it would be good if people did not have to worry about what would happen to them if their crops failed, or if their cattle got sick and died, or if they lost the jobs on which they, along with a number of hungry mouths, depended.

If you don't have things to keep you busy, you end up starting fights with your neighbours.

Alexander McCall Smith