So, in less elevated circles, we might toss a coin as to whether or not to go to a party, decide to go, and there meet the person whom we are to marry and spend our lives with. And if that person came...
Skepticism had its place, but we should not lose sight of the possibility that some beliefs were both necessary and beneficial--a belief in human goodness being a prime example of this. There were ple...
She had, Emma decided, a very particular beauty about her, a quality that required more than the possession of conventionally attractive features. Good looks could be a cliché, which meant that those...
Mma Ramotswe had listened to a World Service broadcast on her radio one day which had simply taken her breath away. It was about philosophers who called themselves existentialists and who, as far as M...
He thought of all the ways that so many people felt about life. Life was a matter of regret--how could it be anything else? We knew that we would lose the things we loved; we knew that sooner or later...
But he'll never be fully recognised, because Scots literature these days is all about complaining and moaning and being injured in one's soul.
Artists were allowed to do that - to look, to gaze at others and try to find out what it was that they were feeling - but we, who were not artists, were not. If one looked too hard that would be consi...
And if you do see any pirates, I don't want you to pick up any rough manners from them. Do you understand?
But although the rules are vagueAnd widely disregarded nowSome precepts remain: live with love - That is a rule we all can understand;Forgive those who need forgiveness,Which I think is everybody, mor...
So it was in Botswana, almost everywhere; ties of kinship, no matter how attenuated by distance or time, linked one person to another, weaving across the country a human blanket of love and community....
It seems to me that we're in danger of losing sight of certain basic civic values in society by allowing the growth of a whole generation of people who really have no sense of attachment to society.
We live in a culture of complaint because everyone is always looking for things to complain about. It's all tied in with the desire to blame others for misfortunes and to get some form of compensation...
Very few people imagine their own future accurately. And then they’re often pleasantly surprised.
Tofu wore special flame-proof pants – that was well known. They call them fibbers’ trousers, she said knowledgeably. They’re more expensive, but they stop your pants going on fire when you lie.
That was what counted, she told herself: those unexpected moments of appreciation, unanticipated glimpses of beauty or kindness - any of the things that attached us to this world, that made us forget,...
I was staying in a house beside the machair. In front of this house was a stretch of lawn, and at the edge of the lawn there was a river. By the riverside, its door wide open, was a shed into which I...
I like you when you're algebraic, said Ulf--and immediately regretted it. It was a flirtatious remark--describing somebody as algebraic was undoubtedly to cross a line. You would not normally describe...
He is a good man, but even a good man can fall for a glamorous woman. That is well known. That is very well known, agreed Mma Ramotswe. Look at Adam. Look how he fell for Eve. Just because she had no...
But we are all fortunate in one way or another. The task for most of us is to identify in what way that is, would you not agree?
But God will surely punish her, Mma, then had decided that this was not the sort of thing that people said any more, even if it was what they were thinking. The trouble was, she thought, that God had...