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The sentiment sounded trite, but then didn’t most good sentiments sound trite? It was hard to make goodness – and good people – sound interesting. Yet the good were worthy of note, of course, because they battled and that battle was a great story, whereas the evil were evil because of moral laziness, or weakness, and that was ultimately a dull and uninteresting affair.

— Alexander McCall Smith

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More quotes by Alexander McCall Smith

We think the world is ours forever, but we are little more than squatters.

One might expect bad behaviour from existentialists – indeed that was what existentialism was all about, was it not? – but to find this happening on one’s own doorstep was a shock.

It would be wonderful to have a guru; it would be like having a social worker or a personal trainer, not that people who had either of these necessarily appreciated the advice they received.

Our minds can come up with the most entertaining possibilities, if we let them. But most of the time, we keep them under far too close a check.

And that, in a way, was the burden of being a philosopher: one knew what one had to do, but it was so often the opposite of what one really wanted to do.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Alexander McCall Smith (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.