Diane > Diane's Quotes

“This is how philosophers should salute each other: ‘Take your time.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein

“Pickled onions had nothing to do with moral imagination, but were important in their own quiet, vinegary way, Isabel supposed.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Sunday Philosophy Club

“There were two classes of persons upon whom a duty of virtually absolute confidentiality rested: doctors and lovers.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Sunday Philosophy Club

“This was loyalty of a sort which was rare in an age of self-indulgence. It was an old-fashioned virtue of the type which her philosophical colleagues extolled but could never themselves match.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Sunday Philosophy Club

“If we were all responsible for the misdeeds of the governments that represent us, thought Isabel, then the moral burden would be just too great.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Friends, Lovers, Chocolate

“Perhaps one should expect to be attended to by philosophers in Edinburgh delicatessens, just as one might be waited upon by psychoanalysts in the restaurants of Buenos Aires. Is the braised beef really what you want?”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Friends, Lovers, Chocolate

“You have to tell her that you have forgiven what she did to you. You have that duty because we all of us have it. It comes in different forms, but it is always the same duty. We have to forgive.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Careful Use of Compliments

“Must be nice to be a seagull. You eat, you sleep, you shag, and if you’re having a bad day you can shite on everyone from a great height. Doesn’t even have to be a bad day, you can do it just for fun.”
― Stuart MacBride, Birthdays for the Dead

“The most that many people could hope for was that they should not incur the wrath of gods whom they had failed to appease or propitiate; beyond that, gods should be left to get on with their proper business and mortals with theirs.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Novel Habits of Happiness: An Isabel Dalhousie Novel (10)

“Although she was unenthusiastic about theology, she had long since realised that the real point of prayer was not to flatter those addressed; prayer was a form of meditation, she decided, and it did not detract from its efficacy that nobody was listening.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Novel Habits of Happiness: An Isabel Dalhousie Novel (10)

“That’s a bit of philosophy right there. We all want ice cream in this life. That’s what we want. And that tells us an awful lot about human nature and the way we feel—which is what philosophy is all about, I would have thought.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Novel Habits of Happiness: An Isabel Dalhousie Novel (10)

“It was a lot easier to be optimistic about equality when you didn’t have to confront the Neanderthals on a daily basis. When you could imagine that people were actually changing their minds because they’d stopped groping secretaries at the photocopier.”
― Val McDermid, Splinter the Silence