The Careful Use of Compliments Quotes

“Do not act meanly, do not be unkind, because the time for setting things right may pass before your heart changes course.
Isabel Dalhousie”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Careful Use of Compliments

“...the thought crossed her mind that a bed was really a very strange thing-a human nest, really, where our human fragility made its nightly demands for comfort and cosseting”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Careful Use of Compliments

“I am blessed and being blessed is something more than just having something. It is a state of mind in which the good of the world is illuminated, it's understood. It is as if one is vouchsafed a vision of some sort, a vision of love, of 'agape', of the essential value of each and every living thing.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Careful Use of Compliments

“The trouble with Grace, she thought, is that she is so literal. But that was the trouble with most people, when it came down to it; there were very few who enjoyed flights of fantasy, and to have that sort of mind--one which enjoyed dry with and understood the absurd--left one in a shrinking minority.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Careful Use of Compliments

“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

“And then the second thing you have to do is go and see your son. That is a duty of love, Andrew. It's as simple as that. A duty of love. Do you understand what I'm saying to you?”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Careful Use of Compliments

“Our possessing of our world is a temporary matter: we stamp our ownership upon our surroundings, give familiar names to the land about us, erect statues of ourselves, but all of this is swept away, so quickly, so easily. We think the world is ours for ever, but we are little more than squatters.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Careful Use of Compliments

“There were two horses in the soul, she thought, as Socrates had said in Phaedrus—the one, unruly, governed by passions, pulling in the direction of self-indulgence; the other, restrained, dutiful, governed by a sense of shame. And Auden had felt the same, she thought; he was a dualist who knew the struggle between the dark and the light sides of the self, the struggle that all of us know to a greater or lesser extent.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Careful Use of Compliments

“If A says to B please tell C something, does B have any obligation to do so? It would depend, thought Isabel, on whether B had agreed to take on the duty of passing on the message. If he had not, then a liberal individualist philosopher would probably say that he did not have to exert himself. That was liberal individualism, of course, with which Isabel did not always agree. Don't go swimming with a liberal individualist, she told herself; he might not save you if you started to drown.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Careful Use of Compliments

“And that, in a way, was the burden of being a philosopher: one knew what one had to do, but it was so often the opposite of what one really wanted to do.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Careful Use of Compliments

“Very..." She left the word hanging. Very unfinished, thought Isabel. The woman finished her sentence. "Very beautiful." Oh, really! thought Isabel. The verdict from others was much the same. Oh well, thought Isabel. Perhaps I'm not sufficiently used to the language he's using. Music is not an international language, she thought, no matter how frequently that claim is made; some words of the language may be the same, but not all, and one needs to know the rules to understand what is being said. Perhaps I just don't understand the conventions by which Nick Smart is communicating with his audience.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Careful Use of Compliments

“I am blessed, and being blessed is something more than just having something; it is a state of mind in which the good of the world is illuminated, is understood. It is as if one is vouchsafed a vision of some sort, she thought, a vision of love, of agape, of the essential value of each and every living thing.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Careful Use of Compliments

“it,’ he said. ‘People change their”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Careful Use of Compliments