Tears of the Giraffe (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #2) QUOTES

1 " Then there was Mr Mandela. Everybody knew about Mr Mandela and how he had forgiven those who had imprisoned him. They had taken away years and years of his life simply because he wanted justice. They had set him to work in a quarry and his eyes had been permanently damaged by the rock dust. But at last, when he had walked out of the prison on that breathless, luminous day, he had said nothing about revenge or even retribution. He had said that there were more important things to do than to complain about the past, and in time he had shown that he meant this by hundreds of acts of kindness towards those who had treated him so badly. That was the real African way, the tradition that was closest to the heart of Africa. We are all children of Africa, and none of us is better or more important than the other. This is what Africa could say to the world: it could remind it what it is to be human. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , Tears of the Giraffe (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #2)

2 " Mma Ramotswe reflected on how easy it was to find oneself committed to a course of action simply because one lacked the courage to say no. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , Tears of the Giraffe (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #2)

3 " Africa had a way of coming back and simply covering everything up again. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , Tears of the Giraffe (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #2)

4 " It was easy to make a difference to other people’s lives, so easy to change the little room in which people lived their life. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , Tears of the Giraffe (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #2)

5 " She had not made a lot of money, but she had not made a loss, and she had been happy and entertained. That counted for infinitely more than a vigorously healthy balance sheet. In fact, she thought, annual accounts should include an item specifically headed Happiness, alongside expenses and receipts and the like. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , Tears of the Giraffe (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #2)

6 " Sometimes she thought that the people overseas had no room in their heart for Africa, because nobody had ever told them that African people were just the same as they were "

― Alexander McCall Smith , Tears of the Giraffe (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #2)

7 " There was far too much interest in the past, she thought. People were forever digging up events that had taken place a long time ago. And what was the point in doing this if the effect was merely to poison the present? "

― Alexander McCall Smith , Tears of the Giraffe (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #2)

8 " Mma Ramotswe found it difficult to imagine what it would be like to have no people. There were, she knew, those who had no others in this life, who had no uncles, or aunts, or distant cousins of any degree; people who were just themselves. Many white people were like that, for some unfathomable reason; they did not seem to want to have people and were happy to be just themselves. How lonely they must be -- like spacemen deep in space, floating in darkness, but without even that silver, unfurling cord that linked the astronauts to their little metal womb of oxygen and warmth. For a moment, she indulged the metaphor, and imagined the tiny white van in space, slowly spinning against a background of stars and she, Mma Ramotswe, of the No. 1 Ladies' Space Agency, floating weightless, head over heels, tied to the tiny white van with a thin washing line. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , Tears of the Giraffe (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #2)

9 " You say that you lost your child. You know how I feel then. You know that, don't you? It's a sadness that never goes away. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , Tears of the Giraffe (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #2)

10 " If the lord came back today, [Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni] thought, he would probably be a mechanic, he reflected. That would be a great honour for mechanics everywhere. And there is no doubt but that e would choose Africa: Israel was far too dangerous these days. In fact, the more one thought about it, the more likely it was that he would choose Botswana, and Gabarone in particular. Now that would be a wonderful honour for the people of Botswana; but it would not happen, and there was no point in thinking about it any further. The Lord was not going to come back; we had had our chance and we had not made very much of it, unfortunately. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , Tears of the Giraffe (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #2)

11 " Hospitals were to her a memento mori in bricks and mortar; an awful reminder of the inevitable end that was coming to all of us but which she felt was best ignored while one got on with the business of life. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , Tears of the Giraffe (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #2)

12 " The Americans were very clever; they sent rockets into space and invented machines which could think more quickly than any human being alive, but all this cleverness could also make them blind. They did not understand other people. They thought that everyone looked at things in the same way as Americans did, but they were wrong. Science was only part of the truth. There were also many other things that made the world what it was, and the Americans often failed to notice these things, although they were there all the time, under their noses. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , Tears of the Giraffe (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #2)

13 " Perhaps one day she would find a place where she would stay. That would be good. To know that the place you were in was your own place—where you should be. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , Tears of the Giraffe (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #2)

14 " All our human endeavours are like that, she reflected, and it is only because we are too ignorant to realize it, or are too forgetful to remember it, that we have the confidence to build something that is meant to last. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , Tears of the Giraffe (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #2)

15 " ...as she made her way back to the tiny white van she listened to her own breathing and felt her own heart thumping wildly. She had no idea where she had found the courage, but it had been there, like the water at the bottom of a disused quarry--unfathomably deep. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , Tears of the Giraffe (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #2)

16 " People were forever digging up events that had taken place a long time ago. And what was the point in doing this if the effect was merely to poison the present? There were many wrongs in the past, but did it help to keep bringing them up and giving them a fresh airing? "

― Alexander McCall Smith , Tears of the Giraffe (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #2)

17 " Places had echoes- and if one were sensitive, one might just pick up some resonance from the past, some feeling for what had happened. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , Tears of the Giraffe (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #2)

18 " The night is a very bad time for questions to which there are no answers.” Mr Badule looked at her. “You are very right, my sister. There is "

― Alexander McCall Smith , Tears of the Giraffe (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #2)

19 " It was inconsiderate not to have a gardener if, like Dr Ranta, you were in a well-paid white-collar job. It was a social duty to employ domestic staff, who were readily available and desperate for work. Wages were low – unconscionably so, thought Mma Ramotswe – but at least the system created jobs. If everybody with a job had a maid, then that was food going into the mouths of the maids and their children. If everybody did their own housework and tended their own gardens, then what were the people who were maids and gardeners to do? "

― Alexander McCall Smith , Tears of the Giraffe (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #2)

20 " from that, there was nothing. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , Tears of the Giraffe (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #2)