Quotes About Understanding

The human heart, you see, Mma Ramotswe, is pretty much the same wherever one goes.

We should love one another, she thought, not only because it was the right thing to do, but also because it was far easier than hating one another. People who hated often had to work quite hard at keeping their hatred warm.

the names we gave to others, and the things we accused them of, often said more about us than they did about them.

And he readily admitted that he knew nothing about women's clothing, as most men would have to admit; and yet women always claimed to know what clothes were right for a man. There was some injustice here, thought Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, although he was not quite sure how one might pursue the point.

And if you do see any pirates, I don't want you to pick up any rough manners from them. Do you understand?

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni waited. If a woman was unhappy, in his experience this could mean that there was a badly behaved man in the background.

We assume so much, don't we? We assume that our children are going to be reasonable. We assume they're going to see things as we see them. And then suddenly we discover that they can look at things quite differently.

Animals, like people, did not ask to be who or what they were, and to make life difficult for others simply for being what they were seemed to her to be fundamentally unkind.

There was that quality of sensitivity, that look in his eyes that told her, and everybody else who cared to look for it, that he understood , but, at the same time, that he was elsewhere.

matter to the test. Starting with a simple command—one that most dogs were capable of understanding and acting upon, sit—he stood in front of Martin, said sit in such a way that the position of his lips was exaggerated, and then pressed firmly on Martin's hindquarters, forcing them down. Martin looked up at his owner in mute incomprehension.

He thought that perhaps she had been thinking the same thing, which was unlikely, but a nice thought anyway—that two people who liked one another should think the same thought at the same time.

Hampus looked up again. Ulf saw that tears had appeared in his eyes. He wanted to reach forward and wipe them away, but that was not for a detective to do.

Most of us go through life so absorbed in the cocoon of ourselves that we rarely stop to consider the other. Of course we think that we do; indeed we may pride ourselves on our capacity for empathy; we may be considerate and thoughtful in our dealings with others, but how often do we stand before them, so to speak, and experience what it is to be them?

Annabelle finished the explanation. "It's just that they take some time to happen. That's the difference.

And as far as fourteen-year-old boys were concerned, she had yet to meet one who was not, at least in some respects, embarrassing or difficult. That, simply, was what fourteen-year-old boys were like.

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

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.

A problem articulated was a problem halfway to being solved.

sometimes the people who were closest to you were also those who were furthest away.

looked at Jock Dundas, who was

Alexander McCall Smith

for most of us there was a central, unavoidable problem— the world was populated by people who were unlike us . That explained so many wars— particularly religious ones; that explained persecutions and injustices; that explained simple everyday irritation with one's fellow man: They were just not like us.

The obvious, Ulf once observed, is rarely the obvious until the passage of time has proved it so.

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.