“Go to any small village anywhere in the world, and see what they remember. Everything. It's all there -- passed on like a precious piece of information, some secret imparted from one who knew to one who yearns to know. Taken good care of.”

“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?”

“Everything, all those great things, had happened so far away--or so it seemed to [Mma Ramotswe] at the time. The world was made to sound as if it belonged to other people--to those who lived in distant countries that were so different from Botswana; that was before people had learned to assert that the world was theirs too, that what happened in Botswana was every bit as important, and valuable, as what happened anywhere else.”

“Now constipation was quite a different matter...It would be dreadful for the whole world to know about troubles of that nature. She felt terribly sorry for people who suffered from constipation, and she knew that there were many who did. There were probably enough of them for a political party - with a chance of government perhaps - but what would such a party do if it was in power? Nothing, she imagined. It would try to pass legislation, but would fail." (p, 195)”

“...pleasure at hearing what all of us wanted to hear at least occasionally: that there was somebody who liked us, whatever our faults, and liked us sufficiently to say so. - Precious Ramotswe”

“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.”

“The readers of Isabel's journal were affected by the conversations within its covers-if nothing else, the livingroom of their moral imagination became bigger. And this must surely have some bearing on the way they dealt with the world, even in the small transactions of life: awareness of the pain of others here, a word of comfort there. Of course, the admission of kindness to one's life did not spring from any contimplation of the views of Hobbes (selfish Hobbes) and Hume (the good, generous Davey), but it did no harm to know about all of that. And that was where philosophy really did count: it set out the major choices behind all of those practical day-to-day questions of charity and understanding and simple decency; it was the weatherthe backdrop against which those practical matters were debated.”