The Importance of Being Seven Quotes

“We might more of us say these words to others, and more frequently--how healing that would prove to be. "Look, we've had our differences, but how about some chocolate?" Or: "I'm so sorry: how about some chocolate?" Or simply, "Great to see you! How about some chocolate?”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Importance of Being Seven

“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 next week; last month I thought it would be never. Today, I know it is now. Each of us, I suppose has at least one person who thinks that our manifest faults are worth ignoring; I have found mine, and am content. When we are far from home we think of home; I, who am happy today, think of those in Scotland for whom such happiness might seem elusive; may such powers as listen to what is said by people like me, in olive groves like this, grant to those who want a friendship a friend, attend to the needs of those who have little, hold the hand of those who are lonely, allow Scotland, our place, our country, to sing in the language of her choosing that song she has always wanted to sing, which is of brotherhood, which is of love.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Importance of Being Seven

“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 next week; last month I thought it would be never. Today, I know it is now.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Importance of Being Seven

“That, incidentally, gives me the greatest possible pleasure—the knowledge that we are all linked by our friendship with a group of fictional people. What a pleasant club of which to be a member! [from the preface; on writing for people around the world]”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Importance of Being Seven

“There was no word for self-pity in the language of the north-east of Scotland - the nearest being a word which is defined in the Scots dictionary as being 'a term used to express self-reproach on paying too much for something.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Importance of Being Seven

“And the beautiful are forgiven; no matter how egregious their shortcomings, they are forgiven.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Importance of Being Seven

“He took a deep breath. ‘To marry me,’ he said quietly. It was easier than he thought. Icarus did not fall from the sky; the ground did not open; the earth did not wobble on its trajectory.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Importance of Being Seven

“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?”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Importance of Being Seven

“But we all waste opportunities,’ said Domenica. Every single one of us. Every young person does it. It’s because we think we have so much time, and then, when we realise that our time is finite, it’s too late.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Importance of Being Seven

“Like ageism and sexism, lookism was everywhere, resulting in the good-looking getting the best jobs, winning all the plaudits, being let off the most parking tickets by soft-hearted traffic wardens; being generally favoured.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Importance of Being Seven

“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.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Importance of Being Seven

“The queue for happiness was not well ordered, he thought; it stretched out and wound round corners, and sometimes, it seemed, the end was so hard to see.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Importance of Being Seven

“There were people like that, he thought; people for whom one wanted only happiness because that is what they deserved, but who were destined to be denied it because the gods, and the world, were unfair. The queue for happiness was not well ordered, he thought; it stretched out and wound round corners, and sometimes, it seemed, the end was so hard to see.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Importance of Being Seven

“But there were many things that one did not really believe that one did not want to disbelieve, just in case they might be true – which they clearly were not, of course.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Importance of Being Seven

“Attacks on political correctness, in her view, were often made by those who had never suffered insult or known what it was like to be at the bottom of the heap. Not that she approved of the wilder excesses of the movement – the Stalinist prohibitions on simple human expression and feelings – but she applauded the increased sensitivity that had grown around the vulnerabilities of others. She was pleased that people were no longer left out because they were different; or made to think the less of themselves because of what they were.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Importance of Being Seven

“Attacks on political correctness, in her view, were often made by those who had never suffered insult or known what it was like to be at the bottom of the heap.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Importance of Being Seven

“Matthew loved Elspeth Harmony – he loved her to the extent that everything that was associated with her, her possessions, her sayings, her friends and connections, were all endowed with a quality of specialness that attached to nothing else. The mug from which she drank her morning coffee was special because her lips had touched it; the tortoiseshell comb that she kept on top of the dressing table was special because it had belonged to Elspeth’s grandmother rather than to any other grandmother; the shopping list that she wrote out to take with her to Valvona & Crolla was special because it was in her handwriting. His affection for her was total, and touching.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Importance of Being Seven

“Her”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Importance of Being Seven

“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?” 81.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Importance of Being Seven

“The sight of such beauty can make us quiet with fear; fear that it might not be real, fear that it might be taken from us, as is everything that we love, which is only on loan to us.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Importance of Being Seven

“the fear of what might happen in the future is almost always worse than the future that eventually arrives.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Importance of Being Seven