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 Mma Ramotswe could ascertain, lived in France. These French people said that you should just live in a way which made you feel real, and that the real thing to do was the right thing too. Mma Ramotswe had listened in astonishment. You did not have to go to France to meet existentialists, she reflected; there were many existentialists right here in Botswana. Note Mokoti, for example. She had been married to an existentialist herself, without even knowing it. Note, that selfish man who never once put himself out for another--not even for his wife--would have approved of existentialists, and they of him. It was very existentialist, perhaps, to go out to bars every night while your pregnant wife stayed at home, and even more existentialist to go off with girls--young existentialist girls--you met in bars. It was a good life being an existentialist, although not too good for all the other, nonexistentialist people around one.

Alexander McCall Smith

Tags: morality philosophy existentialism



Go to quote


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.

Alexander McCall Smith


Go to quote


We do not like those who are completely available, who make themselves over to us entirely. They crowd us out. They make us feel uneasy.

Alexander McCall Smith


Go to quote


Has anyone sen Mr Snark "
"I saw him in the tunnel about 15 minutes ago."
"Oh no " wailed Dr Ferman "he will have been atomised."
"Oh dear" muttered an MP. "Bye-election.

Alexander McCall Smith

Tags: humour



Go to quote


None of us is immune to shipwreck. Come, beckons the fatal shore: come and die on my white sands, it said. And we do.

Alexander McCall Smith


Go to quote


It was a good place to sit, and listen, under a sky that had seen so much and heard so much that one more wicked deed would surely make no difference. Sins, thought Mma Ramotswe, are darker and more powerful when contemplated within confining walls. Out in the open, under such a sky as this, misdeeds were reduced to their natural proportions — small, mean things that could be faced quite openly, sorted, and folded away.

Alexander McCall Smith


Go to quote


If your ceiling should fall down, then you have lost a room, but gained a courtyard. Think of it that way.

Alexander McCall Smith


Go to quote


She had been tied to an incubus, the memory of a love that had been rejected and had had nowhere to go; she had been locked into a dead relationship and now the last dried skin of it had fallen away, like the scab on a wound, and she was free.

Alexander McCall Smith


Go to quote


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.

Alexander McCall Smith

Tags: humour french mma-ramotswe



Go to quote


Boys, men," she said. "They're all the same. They think that this [their manhood] is something special and they're all so proud of it. They do not know how ridiculous it is.

Alexander McCall Smith

Tags: men manhood



Go to quote


« first previous
Page 14 of 27.
next last »

©gutesprueche.com

Data privacy

Imprint
Contact
Wir benutzen Cookies

Diese Website verwendet Cookies, um Ihnen die bestmögliche Funktionalität bieten zu können.

OK Ich lehne Cookies ab