In vain we labour at the loathsome task Not knowing if we wake or sleep ; But in the end we lift the plum

"For when all is equilibrated, when all is beheld from without all, there is joy, joy, joy that is but one facet of a diamond, every other facet whereof is more joyful than joy itself."

"The man of earth is the adherent. The lover giveth his life unto the work among men. The hermit goeth solitary, and giveth only of his light unto men."

"It is sometimes easier to be happy if you don't know everything."

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

"We all know that it is women who make the decisions, but we have to let men think that the decisions are theirs. It is an act of kindness on the part of women."

"The telling of a story, like virtually everything in this life, was always made all the easier by a cup of tea."

"That of all people, it should be him; that took her aback. That the heart should settle on somebody like him; that surprised her. But she was so certain about it, so certain."

"Be content with who you are and where you are, and do whatever you can do to bring to others such contentment, and joy, and understanding that you have managed to find yourself."

"Do not act meanly, do not be unkind, because the time for setting things right may pass before your heart changes course. Isabel Dalhousie"

"A life without stories would be no life at all. And stories bound us, did they not, one to another, the living to the dead, people to animals, people to the land?"

"But don't we often lie to people we love, or not tell them things, precisely because we love them?"

"Every man has a map in his heart of his own country and that the heart will never allow you to forget this map. (p. 18)"

"...great things may come from moments of nothingness."

"There are many women whose lives would be immeasurably improved by widowhood, but one should not always point that out."

"If your ceiling should fall down, then you have lost a room, but gained a courtyard. Think of it that way."

"There is room in history for all of us."

"There is plenty of work for love to do."

"I am just a tiny person in Africa, but there is a place for me, and for everybody, to sit down on this earth and touch it and call it their own."

"Traditional Botswana men like ladies who are more traditionally shaped. You and I, Mma. We remind men of how things used to be in Botswana before these modern-shaped ladies started to get men all confused."

"The previously unloved may find it hard to believe that they are now loved; that is such a miracle, they feel; such a miracle."

"Special things have a way of surviving."

"You are a lucky lady to be marrying a man who can fix things. Most husbands just break things."

"You have to leave your heart to get on with it. It's rather like breathing. We don't have to remind ourselves to breathe."

"Do you realise that people die of boredom in London suburbs? It's the second biggest cause of death amongs the English in general. Sheer boredom..."

"Sorry about your sausage dog."

"We should be careful of the insults we fling at others, lest they return and land at our feet, newly minted to apply to those who had first coined them."

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

"How many of us are happy to be exactly where we are at any moment?...only the completely happy think that they are in the correct place."

"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."

"If more women were in power, they wouldn't let wars break out," she said. "Women can't be bothered with all this fighting. We see war for what it is- a matter of broken bodies and crying mothers."

"The point about love, the essential point, was that we loved what we loved. We did not choose. We just loved."

"This is a city of shifting light, of changing skies, of sudden vistas. A city so beautiful it breaks the heart again and again."

"Women are the ones who knows what's going on,' she said quietly . 'They are the ones with eyes. Have you not heard of Agatha Christie?"

"People stuck by others for years and years, in the face of all odds, and it should be relief, not disbelief, that one felt on witnessing it."

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

"We shall change all that...because it is possible to change the world, if one is determined enough, and if one sees with sufficient clarity just what has to be changed."

"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"

"If you take God out of it, then right and justice become small, human things. And weak things too."

"Everybody knows, she thought, that we have a skeleton underneath our skin; there's no reason to show it"

"Boys, men," she said. "They're all the same. They think that this [their manhood] is something special and they're all so proud of it. They do not know how ridiculous it is."

"There was nothing more unattractive than narcissism, she thought: nothing could transform beauty into a cloying, unattractive quality than that self-conscious appreciation of self."

"The danger, of course, is that we spend time imagining that we would be happier elsewhere, and forget to cultivate happiness where fate has placed us."

"...the thought crossed her mind that a bed was really a very strange thing-a human nest, really, where our human fragility made its nightly demands for comfort and cosseting"

"It was a pointed sigh, as sighs sometimes are, not one cast into the air to evaporate, but one calculated to descend, precisely and with great effect, on a target."

"Isabel saw the intimacy of the gestures and felt immediately empty, a sensation so physical and so overwhelming that she felt for a moment that she might stop breathing, being empty of air"

"When you are with somebody you love the smallest, smallest things can be so important, so amusing because love transforms the world, everything. And was that what had happened?"

"International business, once allowed to stalk uncontrolled, killed the local, the small, the quirky."

"That, said Isabel, is the most painful feature of lost love. you wonder what the other person is doing. Right at this moment. What is he/she doing?"

"There was no need for words, for there are times when words can only hint at what the heart would wish to say."