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It was easy to be moral when that was the way you felt anyway. The hard bit about morality was making yourself feel the opposite of what you really felt.
Alexander McCall Smith
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Alexander McCall Smith
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: August 24
Novelist
Teacher
Writer
Alexander Sandy McCall Smith
Feel
Opposites
Feels
Morality
Really
Bits
Way
Moral
Making
Easy
Felt
Anyway
Hard
Opposite
More quotes by Alexander McCall Smith
Edinburgh used to be a haughty city.
Alexander McCall Smith
Botswana is actually very peaceful. It's democratic. It never was in debt. They've been fortunate, they've had diamonds.
Alexander McCall Smith
There was a distinction between lying and telling half-truths, but it was a very narrow one.
Alexander McCall Smith
I just focus on getting the first scene right, with a few lines about the overall plot, and then the book grows organically.
Alexander McCall Smith
Every small wrong, every minor act of cruelty, every act of petty bullying was symbolic of a greater wrong. And if we ignored these small things, then did it not blunt our outrage over the larger wrongs?
Alexander McCall Smith
If you lose sight of the smaller accomplishments , you end up with an imbalance in your life.
Alexander McCall Smith
Oh I love gadgets and I pride myself on keeping at the cutting edge of technology.
Alexander McCall Smith
If you want to write, do two things - read lots of books and also, in your own writing, practise. Just write and write and then write again. persist. And never be put off or discouraged. You can do it!
Alexander McCall Smith
I'm very interested in tea. I wouldn't mind being involved in some aspect of the tea industry.
Alexander McCall Smith
The people with the strong, brave exteriors are just as weak and vulnerable as the rest of us. And of course they never admit to their childish practices, their moments of weakness or absurdity, and then the rest of us think that's how it should be.
Alexander McCall Smith
As a writer I've learned certain lessons. One of them is to be careful about how you put a view, and to bear in mind how easily and readily you'll be misinterpreted.
Alexander McCall Smith
I have always taken the view that one should never hold against a man anything he says after twelve o'clock at night or after a glass or two of anything.
Alexander McCall Smith
The good were worthy of note because they battled and that battle was a great story, whereas the evil were evil because of moral laziness, or weakness, and that was ultimately a dull and uninteresting affair.
Alexander McCall Smith
My parents were very supportive and always encouraged us. My father was a gentle, nice man. My mother was quite a colourful character and a keen reader who encouraged me to write.
Alexander McCall Smith
But we make such mistakes all the time, all through our lives. Wisdom, I suppose, is seeing this and acting upon it before it is too late. But it is often too late, isn't it? - and those things that we should have said are unsaid, and remain unsaid for ever.
Alexander McCall Smith
Manners are the basic building blocks of civil society.
Alexander McCall Smith
I have three older sisters, so we were a reasonably large family and, in general, a happy one.
Alexander McCall Smith
There are old mycologists and there are bold mycologists, but there are no old, bold mycologists.
Alexander McCall Smith
The Okavango Delta is an astonishing sight: the great Okavango River, rather than flow towards the sea, flows inland, into the sands of the Kalahari.
Alexander McCall Smith
International business, once allowed to stalk uncontrolled, killed the local, the small, the quirky.
Alexander McCall Smith
