Sunshine on Scotland Street Quotes

“The danger, of course, is that we spend time imagining that we would be happier elsewhere, and forget to cultivate happiness where fate has placed us.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Sunshine on Scotland Street

“Irene gasped. "Have you taken leave of your senses, Stuart?" she hissed. "Have you?"
Stuart closed his eyes.
"No," he said. "Au contraire." It was strong language for the Edinburgh New Town, but he had to say it.
"Don't au contraire me," said Irene.
But it was too late. He had.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Sunshine on Scotland Street

“...But although the rules are vague
And widely disregarded now
Some precepts remain: live with love -
That is a rule we all can understand;
Forgive those who need forgiveness,
Which I think is everybody, more or less;
Be kind - that, perhaps, is first and foremost
In any postmodern, new-fangled
Code we devise for ourselves;
Yes, be kind: love one another,
And most of all tend with gentleness
The small patch of terra firma
That is allocated to each of us...”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Sunshine on Scotland Street

“To be cut down to size is good for all of us, but particularly so for those who forget how transient are our cultures and institutions, how pointless and cruel our divisions, how vain our claims to special status for our practices and beliefs above those of others.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Sunshine on Scotland Street

“We put on our walls what we think is beautiful or inspiring, and if others think that it is manufactured or shallow, then they need not have it on their walls.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Sunshine on Scotland Street

“the idea that each of us, even the least of us, has a rich hinterland of value behind us: the lives we have led, the thoughts we have had, the love we have given and received – the little things of our lives that may not mean much to others unless and until they are granted the insight that Angus was suddenly vouchsafed; that insight that brings love into the heart, sudden, singing, exalting love. To see another as a soul was to acknowledge the magnificent, epic course that life is for each of us, and to experience sympathy for the other in his or her negotiation of that course. It was quite different from seeing others simply as people. The word soul had a big job to do, and it was the only word that could do it.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Sunshine on Scotland Street

“We have to have some meaningful sense of the local in order to understand what our shared humanity is. If you take that away from people – as is happening – then they don’t know who they are and that means they won’t care very much about others. You’ll get a crude materialism, because the material is all that we will have in common. You’ll get vast, anonymous societies where we are all strangers to one another. We get much of our humanity from the local, the immediate, the small-scale. We do, you know.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Sunshine on Scotland Street

“For most of us, life is lived with the philosophical volume turned half down. Yes, the world may be beautiful and intense and moving; yes, the very fact of human existence poses the most extraordinarily profound dilemmas; yes, our every act may involve finely nuanced decisions that have to be made; but we have a bus to catch, but we have a bill to pay, but we have to collect the children from school, but …”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Sunshine on Scotland Street

“to reduce the human body to its constituents is a painful reminder that we are nothing much really, in spite of our pretensions; that all our grand notions of self-importance will never overcome the simple biological limitations of our existence – a sobering thought, and an important one. To be cut down to size is good for all of us, but particularly so for those who forget how transient are our cultures and institutions, how pointless and cruel our divisions, how vain our claims to special status for our practices and beliefs above those of others.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Sunshine on Scotland Street

“Goodnight, my boy,” said the Cardinal. “And God bless.” It was a kind thing to say to a dog, and a good thing. Because the least of us, the very least, has the same claim as any other to that love, divine or human, which makes our world, in all its turmoil and pain, easier to comprehend, easier to bear.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Sunshine on Scotland Street

“It was a prolonged, mournful howl, into which Cyril put all the sorrow of the canine condition: a howl that seemed to express deep nostalgia for the woods, for the snowy wastes of his lupine ancestors’ ancient homelands, for all the sense of loss and separation that a dog feels when his master, his reason for living, his sun, is no longer there.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Sunshine on Scotland Street

“And would you like to do that, Bertie?” asked the psychotherapist. Bertie nodded. Dr. St. Clair scribbled a note on his pad. Fantasies of escape, he wrote. But why Iceland? 50. A Fiscally Responsible Boy For some reason unknown”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Sunshine on Scotland Street

“of being linked with each other, we have every temptation to be selfish and unmoved by others and by their plight. Our towns, our cities, our places become no more than hotels, with all that lack of intimacy that is a feature of hotels – strangers under one roof, no more. Well, we should not be strangers to one another. We”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Sunshine on Scotland Street

“No buts, Bertie. If you don’t keep your promise then you’ll get into serious trouble. Big time. You could go to prison, and then what? And there’s God too. God watches these things and if he sees you breaking promises he can really get you. He does it all the time.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Sunshine on Scotland Street

“the finding of a cargo of whisky was, in a sense, like the finding by the Israelites of manna in the wilderness. And”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Sunshine on Scotland Street

“But you can certainly take fifteen years off everything these days.” She paused. “But you can’t take height off a mountain.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Sunshine on Scotland Street

“that weddings are far more than marriage ceremonies; we know that they are occasions for family stock-taking and catharsis; that”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Sunshine on Scotland Street

“The forges of friendship, thought Angus, may be busy ones, but their dorrs are always open.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Sunshine on Scotland Street

“Angus had not been particularly helpful in his suggestions. He had himself composed the words of a hymn some time ago when he had offered to the hymn revision committee of the Church of Scotland a composition called “God Looks Down on Belgium.” The opening words of this hymn, however, proved to be not quite what the committee wanted: “God’s never heard of Belgium / But loves it just the same / For God is kind and doesn’t mind / He’s not impressed with fame.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Sunshine on Scotland Street