Matthew knew that phrenology was nonsense, and yet, years later, he found himself making judgments similar to those made by his father; slippery people looked slippery; they really did. And how we bec...
Martha simply did not know that virtually everything she said was inappropriate, and so there was no point in remonstrating with her.
Many people only go to see other people when they want to ask for some favour.
Make sure that the road is always clear for your enemy to leave’?
MMA RAMOTSWE observed speed limits for two reasons. One of these was that she believed that laws were there to be obeyed, and that if everybody drove as fast as they liked there would be mayhem on the...
Love is nothing out of the ordinary, even if we think it is; even if we idealise it, celebrate it in poetry, sentimentalise it in coy valentines. Love happens to just about everyone; it is like measle...
Love and compassion are the only balm
I’m taking on another person’s memories, another person’s family, another person’s life. Love obscured all of that because if it did not, then nobody would marry at all, and there had to be marriage,...
It's so difficult to sustain a fatwa,' said Domenica. 'One has to be so enthusiastic. I'm not sure if I could find the moral energy myself.
It's a different sort of love taht puts up with illness. Old love.
It would be strange to live in a country where people were silent, passing one another in the street wordlessly, as if frightened of what the other might think or say. This was not the African way, wh...
It was just too easy to say that adults did not like stories that were simple, and perhaps that was wrong. Perhaps that was what adults really wanted, searched for and rarely found: a simple story in...
It was always disconcerting to meet those who had become so obsessed with a single topic that they could not see their concerns in context.
It was always a mistake, she thought, to dwell on the cause of one's anger.
It was all a question of face, she decided: you had to leave room for face to be saved.
It was Lennie Marchbanks at the door. She had met him once or twice before and rather liked him; mechanics struck her as being such easy, agreeable people. And, she noticed, as a psychotherapist, one...
It seemed an odd thing to say, and yet all of us had a view from somewhere, a view of the world from the perspective of who we were, of what had happened to us, of how we thought about things.
Isabel’s private theory of moral proximity, the basis of those obligations that came into existence when we found ourselves close enough to others to be able to witness or feel their needs, or when we...
Isabel had firm views on moral proximity and the obligations it created. WE cannot choose the situations in which we become involved in this life; we are caught up in them whether we like it or not. I...
If you have enemies, then your biggest enemy is yourself. Do you know that, Mma?