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The Sunday Philosophy Club (Isabel Dalhousie, #1) QUOTES

The Sunday Philosophy Club (Isabel Dalhousie, #1) QUOTES

1 " There was a distinction between lying and telling half-truths, but it was a very narrow one. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The Sunday Philosophy Club (Isabel Dalhousie, #1)

2 " She had argued for a broad interpretation, which imposed a duty to answer questions truthfully, and not to hide facts which could give a different complexion to a matter, but on subsequent thought she had revised her position.

Although she still believed that one should be frank in answers to questions, this duty arose only where there was an obligation, based on a reasonable expectation, to make a full disclosure. There was no duty to reveal everything in response to a casual question by one who had no right to the information. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The Sunday Philosophy Club (Isabel Dalhousie, #1)

3 " For a short while she considered the idea of orchestral courtesy. Certainly one should avoid giving political offence: German orchestras, of course, used to be careful about playing Wagner abroad, at least in some countries, choosing instead German composers who were somewhat more ... apologetic. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The Sunday Philosophy Club (Isabel Dalhousie, #1)

4 " Great art, she felt, had a calming effect on the viewer; it made one stop in awe, which is exactly what Damien Hirst and Andy Warhol did not do. You did not stop in awe. They stopped you in your tracks, perhaps, but that was not the same thing; awe was something quite different "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The Sunday Philosophy Club (Isabel Dalhousie, #1)

5 " She was made for untidy rooms and rumpled beds. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The Sunday Philosophy Club (Isabel Dalhousie, #1)

6 " But he'll never be fully recognised, because Scots literature these days is all about complaining and moaning and being injured in one's soul. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The Sunday Philosophy Club (Isabel Dalhousie, #1)

7 " The language of Cat's generation was far harder than that of her own, and more pithily correct: in their terms, he was a hunk. But why, she wondered, should anybody actually want a hunk, when non-hunks were so much more interesting? "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The Sunday Philosophy Club (Isabel Dalhousie, #1)

8 " We can't have moral obligations to every single person in this world. We have moral obligations to those who we come up against, who enter into our moral space, so to speak. That means neighbors, people we deal with, and so on. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The Sunday Philosophy Club (Isabel Dalhousie, #1)

9 " This was a townscape raised in the teeth of cold winds from the east; a city of winding cobbled streets and haughty pillars; a city of dark nights and candlelight, and intellect. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The Sunday Philosophy Club (Isabel Dalhousie, #1)

10 " Isabel observed an etiquette of the telephone: a call before eight in the morning was an emergency; between eight and nine it was an intrusion; thereafter calls could be made until ten in the evening, although anything after nine-thirty required an apology for the disturbance. After ten one was into emergency time again. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The Sunday Philosophy Club (Isabel Dalhousie, #1)

11 " She's sociopathic. She will have no moral compunction in doing whatever is in her interests. It's as simple as that. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The Sunday Philosophy Club (Isabel Dalhousie, #1)

12 " Distant wrongs, she thought: an interesting issue in moral philosophy. Do past wrongs seem less wrong to us simply because they are less vivid? "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The Sunday Philosophy Club (Isabel Dalhousie, #1)

13 " We do not like those who are completely available, who make themselves over to us entirely. They crowd us out. They make us feel uneasy. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The Sunday Philosophy Club (Isabel Dalhousie, #1)

14 " There were two classes of persons upon whom a duty of virtually absolute confidentiality rested: doctors and lovers. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The Sunday Philosophy Club (Isabel Dalhousie, #1)

15 " We needed resentment, he said, as it was resentment which identified and underlined the wrong. Without these reactive attitudes, we ran the risk of diminishing our sense of right and wrong, because we could end up thinking it just doesn't matter. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The Sunday Philosophy Club (Isabel Dalhousie, #1)

16 " There were few other passengers: a man in an overcoat, his head sunk against his chest; a couple with arms around each other, impervious to their surroundings; and a teenage boy with a black scarf wound round his neck, Zorro-style. Isabel smiled to herself: a microcosm of our condition, she thought. Loneliness and despair; love and its self-absorption; and sixteen, which was a state all its own. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The Sunday Philosophy Club (Isabel Dalhousie, #1)

17 " I'd like to be tidy, said Hen, I try, but I guess you can't be what you aren't. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The Sunday Philosophy Club (Isabel Dalhousie, #1)

18 " It was easy, terribly easy, to become with time a middle-aged spinster with a sharp tongue. She would have to guard against this. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The Sunday Philosophy Club (Isabel Dalhousie, #1)

19 " Whisky nosers, as they called themselves, eschewed what they saw as the pretentiousness of wine vocabulary. While oenophiles resorted to recondite adjectives, whisky nosers spoke the language of everyday life, detecting hints of stale seaweed, or even diesel fuel. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The Sunday Philosophy Club (Isabel Dalhousie, #1)

20 " She was tuned in to a different station from most people and the tuning dial was broken. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The Sunday Philosophy Club (Isabel Dalhousie, #1)