Belief

"Was it weakness to allow oneself the pleasure of thinking that one counted in some way? And did this engagement not result, on balance, in greater human happiness? No, said the atheists, it did not. And yet where, William wondered, were the great works of those who believed in nothing at all?"


"The need to believe was always there, and it would find expression, even if it attached itself to something paltry and shallow such as celebrity culture. And for many millions that was where their spiritual energy went -into fascination with fashion and the lives of narcissistic entertainers."

A Conspiracy of Friends, Alexander McCall Smith

Queen Elizabeth

If We Feel We Have Achieved Little of Consequence

". . . he suddenly realized that if he felt that he had achieved nothing it was because he had failed to cherish what he had in fact done. He had filled his days doing ordinary unexceptional things and thought nothing of them. But they were far from nothing: even the act of making his morning cup of tea . . amounted to a small miracle: that there should, in this cold void of space, be a small blue planet on which he, a rather complex collection of cells, should be delighting in the dried black leaves of a plant that grew half a world away; that surely was astonishing and worthy of celebration and awe."

A Conspiracy of Friends, Alexander McCall Smith