Quotes About Understanding

And if there's bad behaviour, Mma Potokwane went on. If there's bad behaviour, the quickest way of stopping it is to give more love. That always works, you know. People say we must punish when there is wrongdoing, but if you punish you're only punishing yourself. And what's the point of that?

Women are the ones who knows what's going on,' she said quietly . 'They are the ones with eyes. Have you not heard of Agatha Christie?

He looked at her in the darkness, at this woman who was everything to him-mother, Africa, wisdom, understanding, good things to eat, pumpkins, chicken, the white sky across the endless, endless bush, and the giraffe that cried, giving its tears for women to daub on their baskets; O Botswana, my country, my place.

If we treated others with the consideration that one would give to those who only had a few days to live, then we would be kinder, at least.

this woman, moved by some private sorrow as much as the words being spoken, cried almost silently, unobserved by others, apart from Mma Ramotswe, who stretched out her hand and laid it on her shoulder. Do not cry, Mma , she began to whisper, but changed her words even as she uttered them, and said quietly, Yes, you can cry, Mma . We should not tell people not to weep - we do it because of our sympathy for them - but we should really tell them that their tears are justified and entirely right.

There was no need for words, for there are times when words can only hint at what the heart would wish to say.

Protestations of happiness could sound almost boasting to those whose happiness is incomplete. One did not boast of perfect skin to one affected by dermatitis; for the same reason, perhaps, one should take care in proclaiming one's happiness.

There's a difference, I think, between falling in love and knowing it.

She felt that she had revealed something to Cat, and with revealing something about oneself there always comes a sense of lightening of the load that we all carry; the load of being ourselves.

You say that you lost your child. You know how I feel then. You know that, don't you? It's a sadness that never goes away.

It is hard, she thought, it is hard for us to think of people who dislike us because none of us, in our heart, believes that we deserve the hatred of others.

Anthropology, she thought, like charity, surely begins at home.

Saying sorry does not make you look small—it makes you look big.

Well," said Mma Ramotswe, "I have felt that anger. I felt it when I saw that the van had gone. I felt it a bit in the truck on the way back. But what is the point of anger now, Mma? I don't think that anger will help us." Mma Makutsi sighed. "You are right about anger," she said. "There is no point in it.

So it was perfectly possible that there were men who liked shopping, men who understood exactly what it was all about, but Mma Ramotwe had yet to meet such a man. Maybe they existed elsewhere - in France, perhaps - but they did not seem to be much in evidence in Botswana.

Telling a person with toothache that there are others with greater toothache than their own was no help at all.

She would give him the benefit of the doubt, as she always did: her experience had taught her that the names we gave to others, and the things we accused them of, often said more about us than they did about them.

And the beautiful are forgiven; no matter how egregious their shortcomings, they are forgiven.

We don't hate people, Puso. We don't hate anybody." He looked at her sullenly. "Why?" he asked. "Because hate makes you very tired," said Mma Ramotswe. She wondered whether there was more to say, but suddenly she felt tired herself.

It is such an easy thing to do—to touch another in sympathy—but it is such a hard thing too.

If only people could keep that in their minds—if they could remember that the people they met during the day had all the same hopes and fears that they had, then there would be so much less conflict and disagreement in this world. If only people remembered that, then they would be kinder to others—and kindness, Mma Ramotswe believed, was the most important thing there was. She knew that in the depths of her being; she knew it.

To be able to imagine the ohter, and the experience of the other was what wisdome was all about; but nobody talked about wisdom very much anymore, nor virtue perhaps because wisdom was nto appreciated in a world of glitz and effect.

Simple questions--and simple answers--were what we needed in life. That was what Mma Ramotswe believed. Yes.

She had always believed that people who were nasty or unkind to others were only like that because there was something wrong in their lives, and that people who had something wrong in their lives were not to be despised or hated, but were to be pitied. So