Welcome to my commonplace blog

The goal of this blog is to preserve a few ideas and quotes from books I read. In the old days when books were not so readily available, people kept "commonplace books" where they copied choice passages they wanted to be able to remember and perhaps reuse. The idea got picked up by V.F.D. and it's common knowledge that most of that organization's volunteers have kept commonplace books, and so have Laura and I.

I'm sure there are many other Internet sites and blogs dedicated to the same idea. But this one is mine. Feel free to look around and leave comments, but not spam.

04 October 2012

In the Company of Cheerful Ladies (The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency) (Alexander Mccall Smith)


Quotes:

But after a few minutes, as they watched Charlie walking quickly away in the direction of the town, they realised that something serious and potentially irremediable had happened. They saw before them the ruins of a career; the wrecking of a life.

Now he has decided that he can give everything up just because his rich lady is running after him in her Mercedes-Benz. Oh dear! Those cars have a lot to answer for.”

We are all human, all creatures of water and salt, all human.

People did not spend enough time sitting and talking, she thought, and it was important that sitting and talking time be preserved.

She had been too young then to stand up to him, and now, when she could do so, when she had the facts of her success with which to confront him, she felt only the same ancient fear, the fear which had made women through the ages cower before such men.

There was a way of walking in Johannesburg, a way of holding oneself, that was different from the way in which people did these things in Botswana. Johannesburg was a city of swagger, and that was something which people in Botswana would never do.

One might have all the things which the modern world offered, but what was the use of these if they destroyed all that which gave you strength and courage and pride in yourself and your country?

Mma Ramotswe was horrified when she read of people being described in the newspapers as consumers. That was a horrible, horrible word, which sounded rather too like cucumber, a vegetable for which she had little time. People were not just greedy consumers, grabbing everything that came their way, nor were they cucumbers for that matter; they were Batswana, they were people!

that is what redeems us, that is what makes our pain and sorrow bearable—this giving of love to others, this sharing of the heart.

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