"The new lover, of a few weeks standing, may seem more precious than friends of decades."

"You cannot make somebody love something. They must have love in their heart first."

"That's the curious thing about love, isn't it? It makes very ordinary things seem special. It makes them seem so much more valuable than they really are."

"...has it ever occurred to people that love at first sight might be the rule rather than the exception? How many people fall in love gradually rather than on the first occasion they meet the other person?"

"Perhaps if you don't know there's a gap, you don't worry about it. If you were a millipede, a tshongololo, crawling along the ground would you look at the birds and worry about not having wings? Probably not."

"She had been seized with a sudden existential horror. The house had white carpets and white furniture and, most significantly, no books."

"Men can be teenagers until well into their twenties. That is well known"

"Well, that's the important thing, isn't it, Mma? To feel happiness, and then to remember it."

"Lightning always strikes in the same place twice," said Mma Ramotswe. "Whatever people say to the contrary."

"It is my duty to help them solve the mysteries in their lives. That is what I am called to do."

"The young rarely believe that they will not be able to get what they want, because there is always an open future."

"She had noticed that there was a tendency on the part of some Americans to believe that everybody, deep inside, wanted to live in America, and that it was inexplicable that people who could do so did not."

"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."

"Anthropology, she thought, like charity, surely begins at home."

"...it must be odd to have no ambition, not to want something more."

"Myth is a cloud based upon a shadow based upon the movement of the breeze."

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

"None of us is immune to shipwreck. Come, beckons the fatal shore: come and die on my white sands, it said. And we do."

"She remembered love, though, and a feeling of warmth. It was like remembering light, or the glow that sometimes persists after a light has gone out."

"Mma Ramotswe did not like lying, but sometimes it was necessary, particularly when faced with people who were promoted beyond their talents."

"Moisturiser and a good cry: two things for modern men to think about."

"Will you be my friend?” Bertie asked. And then added: “Just for Paris. You don’t have to be my friend forever – just for Paris."

"The problem with being me, thought Isabel, as she walked along George IV Bridge, is that I keep thinking about the problem of being me."

"Women, as usual, were expected to behave better than men, and inevitably attracted criticism for doing things that men were licensed to do with impunity."

"It was time for tea as it so often was."

"Antonia was very conscious of the corrosive power of envy and felt that it was this emotion, more than any other, which lay behind human unhappiness. People did not realise how widespread envy was."

"There's a difference, I think, between falling in love and knowing it."

"How many of us are happy to be exactly where we are at any moment?"

"Oh! Most miserable wretch that I am! Why have I not learnt how to swim?"

"I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well. {His teacher was the legendary philosopher Aristotle}"

"How happy had it been for me had I been slain in the battle. It had been far more noble to have died the victim of the enemy than fall a sacrifice to the rage of my friends."

"Whatever possession we gain by our sword cannot be sure or lasting, but the love gained by kindness and moderation is certain and durable."

"You shall, I question not, find a way to the top if you diligently seek for it; for nature hath placed nothing so high that it is out of the reach of industry and valor."

"Shall I, that have destroyed my Preservers, return home?"

"Heaven cannot brook two suns, nor earth two masters."

"How great are the dangers I face to win a good name in Athens."

"I am dying from the treatment of too many physicians."

"In the end, when it's over, all that matters is what you've done."

"True love never has a happy ending, because there is no ending to true love."

"Bury my body and don't build any monument. Keep my hands out so the people know the one who won the world had nothing in hand when he died."

"I do not pilfer victory."

"How should a man be capable of grooming his own horse, or of furbishing his own spear and helmet, if he allows himself to become unaccustomed to tending even his own person, which is his most treasured belonging?"

"For my own part, I would rather excel in knowledge of the highest secrets of philosophy than in arms."

"I had rather excel others in the knowledge of what is excellent, than in the extent of my power and dominion."

"If we turn our backs of the Scythians who have provoked us, how shamefully shall we march against the revolted Bactrians; but if we pass Tanais and make the Scythians feel, by dear experience, that we are invincible, not in Asia only, it is not to be doubted but that Europe itself, as well as Asia, will come within the bounds of our conquests."

"Who does not desire such a victory by which we shall join places in our Kingdom, so far divided by nature, and for which we shall set up trophies in another conquered world?"

"May God keep you away from the venom of the cobra, the teeth of the tiger, and the revenge of the Afghans."

"Soldiers, I had lately like to have been taken from you by the attempt of a few desperate men, but by the grace and providence of the gods, I am still preserved."

"I wish that the Indians believed me a god, for upon the report of an enemy's valor oftentimes depends the success of a battle, and false reports have many times done as great things as true courage and resolution."

"His father is governor of Media, and though he has the greatest command given him of all the rest of my generals, he still covetously desires more, and my being without issue spurs him on to this wicked design. But Philotas takes wrong measures."