Contact
Privacy
Book: The Lost Art of Gratitude
Quotes of Book: The Lost Art of Gratitude
TOP TAGS :sinkhebrewoddsthankfulnostalgiaritualsspermhubris

  1. Alexander McCall Smith _ The Lost Art of Gratitude

    She should not have taken any of these people at face value. She had been naive. But this conclusion, she realized, pointed unambiguously in the direction of cynicism. And she would not be a cynic. It was better to be naive, much better.
    book-quote

  2. Alexander McCall Smith _ The Lost Art of Gratitude

    The readers of Isabel's journal were affected by the conversations within its covers-if nothing else, the livingroom of their moral imagination became bigger. And this must surely have some bearing on the way they dealt with the world, even in the small transactions of life: awareness of the pain of others here, a word of comfort there. Of course, the admission of kindness to one's life did not spring from any contimplation of the views of Hobbes {selfish Hobbes} and Hume {the good, generous Davey}, but it did no harm to know about all of that. And that was where philosophy really did count: it set out the major choices behind all of those practical day-to-day questions of charity and understanding and simple decency; it was the weatherthe backdrop against which those practical matters were debated.
    book-quote

  3. Alexander McCall Smith _ The Lost Art of Gratitude

    Isabel is looking at several collections of research journals. 'She would understand the issues if she chose to open one of the volumes, but she knew that there were conversations within which she would never have the time to participate in. And that, of course, was the problem with any large collection of books, whether in a library or a bookshop: one might feel intimidated by the fact that there was simply too many to read and not know where to start.
    book-quotelibrary

  4. Alexander McCall Smith _ The Lost Art of Gratitude

    For a moment, Isabel's eyes met those of someone looking out of the window, a thin-faced woman with her hair done up in a bun. The woman began a smile, but stopped, as if conscious of somehow transgressing the conventions of isolation with which as city-dwellers we immure ourselves. The bus moved on, and zisabel felt a sudden desire to run alongside it, to wave to the woman, to aknowledge the unexpected exchange of fellow feeling between them. But she did mot, necause she never acted on these impulses, and because it might have puzzled or even frightened the other woman.
    book-quote

  5. Alexander McCall Smith _ The Lost Art of Gratitude

    Moral beauty existed as clearly as any other form of beauty and perhaps that was where we could find the God who was so vividly, and sometimes bizarrely, described in our noisy religious explanations. It was an intriguing thought, as it meant that a concert could be a spiritual experience, a secular painting a religious icon, a beguiling face a passing angel.
    book-quotereligion

  6. Alexander McCall Smith _ The Lost Art of Gratitude

    It was just too easy to say that adults did not like stories that were simple, and perhaps that was wrong. Perhaps that was what adults really wanted, searched for and rarely found: a simple story in which good triumphs against cynicism and dispair. That was what she wanted, but she was aware of the fact that one did not publicise the fact too widely, certainly not in sophisticated circles. Such circles wanted complexity, dysfunction and irony: there was no room for joy, celebration or pathos. But where was the FUN in that?
    book-quote

  7. Alexander McCall Smith _ The Lost Art of Gratitude

    Myth could be as sustaining as reality - sometimes even more so.
    book-quotereality
Categories