Morality for Beautiful Girls Quotes

“It is sometimes easier to be happy if you don't know everything.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls

“She had a taste for sugar, however, and this meant that a doughnut or a cake might follow the sandwich. She was a traditionally built lady, after all, and she did not have to worry about dress size, unlike those poor, neurotic people who were always looking in mirrors and thinking that they were too big. What was too big, anyway? Who was to tell another person what size they should be? It was a form of dictatorship, by the thin, and she was not having any of it. If these thin people became any more insistent, then the more generously sized people would just have to sit on them. Yes, that would teach them! Hah!”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls

“You are a lucky lady to be marrying a man who can fix things. Most husbands just break things.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls

“Mma Ramotsew accepted her large slice of cake and looked at the rich fruit within it. There were at least seven hundred calories in that, she thought, but it did not matter; she was a traditionally built lady and she did not have to worry about such things.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls

“...the real poison within families is not the poison that you put in your food, but the poison that grows up in the heart when people are jealous of one another and cannot speak these feelings and drain out the poison that way.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls

“You simply could not help everybody; but you could at least help those who came into your life.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls

“Most morality, thought Mma Ramotswe, was about doing the right thing because it had been identified as such by a long process of acceptance and observance. You simply could not create your own morality because your experience would never be enough to do so. What gives you the right to say that you know better than your ancestors? Morality is for everybody and this means that the views of more than one person are needed to create it. That was what made modern morality, with its emphasis on individuals and the working out of an individual person, so weak. If you gave people the chance to work out their morality, then they would work out the version which was easiest for them and which allowed them to do what suited them for as much of the time as possible. That, in Mma Ramotswe's view, was simple selfishness, whatever grand name one gave it.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls

“Women, as usual, were expected to behave better than men, and inevitably attracted criticism for doing things that men were licensed to do with impunity.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls

“Morality is for everybody, and this means that the views of more than one person are needed to create it. That was what made the modern morality, with its emphasis on individuals and the working out of an individual position, so weak. If you gave people the chance to work out their morality, then they would work out the version which was easiest for them and which allowed them to do what suited them for as much of the time as possible. That, in Mma Ramotswe's view, was simple selfishness, whatever grand name one gave to it.”
― Alexander Mccall smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls

“We need a person whom we can make our little god on this earth, as the old Kgatla saying had it. Whether it was a spouse, or a child, or a parent, or anybody else for that matter, there must be somebody who gives our lives purpose.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls

“Do not be ashamed to cry, Rra,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It is the way that things begin to get better. It is the first step.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls

“Mma Ramotswe had listened to a World Service broadcast on her radio one day which had simply taken her breath away. It was about philosophers who called themselves existentialists and who, as far as Mma Ramotswe could ascertain, lived in France. These French people said that you should just live in a way which made you feel real, and that the real thing to do was the right thing too. Mma Ramotswe had listened in astonishment. You did not have to go to France to meet existentialists, she reflected; there were many existentialists right here in Botswana. Note Mokoti, for example. She had been married to an existentialist herself, without even knowing it. Note, that selfish man who never once put himself out for another--not even for his wife--would have approved of existentialists, and they of him. It was very existentialist, perhaps, to go out to bars every night while your pregnant wife stayed at home, and even more existentialist to go off with girls--young existentialist girls--you met in bars. It was a good life being an existentialist, although not too good for all the other, nonexistentialist people around one.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls

“Stand on your toe. That is what one said in Setswana if one hoped that something would happen. It was the same as the expression which white people used: cross your fingers.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls

“Mma Ramotswe tucked the cheque safely away in her bodice. Modern business methods were all very well, she thought, but when it came to the safeguarding of money there were some places which had yet to be bettered.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls

“Morality is for everybody, and this means that the views of more than one person are needed to create it. That was what made the modern morality, with its emphasis on individuals and the working out of an individual position, so weak. If you gave people the chance to work out their morality, then they would work out the version which was easiest for them and which allowed them to do what suited them for as much of the time as possible. That, in Mma Ramotswe’s view, was simple selfishness, whatever grand name one gave to it. Mma”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls

“Africa was full of people in need of help and there had to be a limit. You simply could not help everybody; but you could at least help those who came into your life. That principle allowed you to deal with the suffering you saw. That was your suffering. Other people would have to deal with the suffering that they, in their turn, came across.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls

“am lucky that I can make somebody so happy just by saying something.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls

“Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni nodded his head.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls

“It is sometimes easier to be happy if you don’t know everything.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls

“It occurred to Mma Ramotswe that such behaviour was no more than ignorance; an inability to understand the hopes and aspirations of others. That understanding, thought Mma Ramotswe, was the beginning of all morality. If you knew how a person was feeling, if you could imagine yourself in her position, then surely it would be impossible to inflict further pain. Inflicting pain in such circumstances would be like hurting oneself.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls

“You simply could not help everybody; but you could at least help those who came into your life. That principle allowed you to deal with the suffering you saw. That was your suffering. Other people would have to deal with the suffering that they, in their turn, came across.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls

“Mr Pilai looked down. “Mma Ramotswe,” he said. “Please let me look at you. I have just been given these new spectacles, and I can see the world clearly for the first time in years. Ow! It is a wonderful thing. I had forgotten what it was like to see clearly. And there you are, Mma. You are looking very beautiful, very fat.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls

“Mr Pilai looked down. “Mma Ramotswe,” he said. “Please let me look at you. I have just been given these new spectacles, and I can see the world clearly for the first time in years. Ow! It is a wonderful thing. I had forgotten what it was like to see clearly. And there you are, Mma. You are looking very beautiful, very fat.” “Thank you, Rra.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls

“We do need somebody else in this life, thought Mma Ramotswe; we need a person whom we can make our little god on this earth, as the old Kgatla saying had it. Whether it was a spouse, or a child, or a parent, or anybody else for that matter, there must be somebody who gives our lives purpose.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls

“There you are,” said Mma Makutsi. “Women have been tricked. They have tricked us, Mma. And we walked into their trap like cattle.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls

“The real poison within families is not the poison that can be put in your food, but the poison that grows up in the heart when people are jealous of one another and cannot speak these feelings and drain out the poison that way.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls

“Her friend who treated her maid badly was not a wicked person. She behaved well towards her family and she had always been kind to Mma Ramotswe, but when it came to her maid—and Mma Ramotswe had met this maid, who seemed an agreeable, hardworking woman from Molepolole—she seemed to have little concern for her feelings. It occurred to Mma Ramotswe that such behaviour was no more than ignorance; an inability to understand the hopes and aspirations of others. That understanding, thought Mma Ramotswe, was the beginning of all morality. If you knew how a person was feeling, if you could imagine yourself in her position, then surely it would be impossible to inflict further pain. Inflicting pain in such circumstances would be like hurting oneself. Mma Ramotswe knew that there was a great deal of debate about morality, but in her view it was quite simple. In the first place, there was the old Botswana morality, which was simply right. If a person stuck to this, then he would be doing the right thing and need not worry about it. There were other moralities, of course; there were the Ten Commandments, which she had learned by heart at Sunday School in Mochudi all those years ago; these were also right in the same, absolute way. These codes of morality were like the Botswana Penal Code; they had to be obeyed to the letter. It was no good pretending you were the High Court of Botswana and deciding which parts you were going to observe and which you were not. Moral codes were not designed to be selective, nor indeed were they designed to be questioned. You could not say that you would observe this prohibition but not that. I shall not commit theft—certainly not—but adultery is another matter: wrong for other people, but not for me.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls

“This tea is for people who really appreciate tea. Ordinary tea is for anyone.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls

“Every story has two sides. So far, we’ve only heard one. The stupid side.”   LIFE”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls

“The ordinary people of Africa tended not to have room in their hearts for hatred. They were sometimes foolish, like people anywhere, but they did not bear grudges, as Mr Mandela had shown the world.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls