If you did not keep your yard in reasonable order, then your whole life would be similarly untidy. A messy yard told Mma Ramotswe everything she needed to know about its owner.
It shall be an offence for any man, either a husband or other person of the male sex, married or otherwise, being over the age of twelve years, to throw any item of clothing having been worn by the sa...
Everybody in a village had a role to play in bringing up a child—and cherishing it—and in return that child would in due course feel responsible for everybody in that village. That is what makes life...
Are we facing a new Dark Age, Angus? Possibly, Lou. A dark age in which our concentration spell is this long.
The house seemed so different at night. Everything was in its correct place, of course, but somehow the furniture seemed more angular and the pictures on the wall more one-dimensional. She remembered...
People who do that sort of thing may reap what they sow, but they also destroy the harvest of those who are around them.
Tolerance was like one of those soothing creams—it drew out inflammation, it did away with the pain.
Sociopaths are attracted to politics because the see it as a sphere in which you can be ruthless and step all over people. That fact that some politicians can tell such awful lies is another example o...
Africa will get nowhere until we have mechanics... Mechanics are the first stone in the building. Then there are other people on top. Doctors. Nurses. Teachers. But the whole thing is built on mechani...
I shall go and sit under a tree…. Which tree, Mma?... Oh, there are many trees in this life, she said. It does not matter which tree you choose, as long as you choose the right one.
Then there was Mr Mandela. Everybody knew about Mr Mandela and how he had forgiven those who had imprisoned him. They had taken away years and years of his life simply because he wanted justice. They...
I'd like to be tidy, said Hen, I try, but I guess you can't be what you aren't.
I have a feeling that we've seen the dismantling of civilisation, brick by brick, and now we're looking into the void. We thought that we were liberating people from oppressive cultural circumstances,...
Dear friends, he began, there is no timetable for happiness; it moves, I think, according to rules of its own. When I was a boy I thought I'd be happy tomorrow, as a young man I thought it would be ne...
Writers obviously have to bear witness to the harsh face of the age.
…products of soulless machines and relentless globalization…
It was a stark choice: shoes or food; beauty or sustenance; the sensible or the self-indulgent. I'll take the shoes, she said firmly.
How often have I noticed or, indeed, listened to him? We talk, but do I actually listen, or is our conversation mainly a question of my waiting for him to stop and for it to be my turn to say somethin...
…there is faith and faith. One form of faith is actual practice—the rituals and so on—the other form of faith involves actually believing in it.
…did it make a difference if the remark never got back to the person about whom it was made? She thought not. The harm is done when the words are uttered: that is the act of belittlement, the act of d...