History Quotes / Discworld

!Witches

[[folder: Equal Rites]]
->If broomsticks were cars, this one would be a split-window Morris Minor.


->"While I'm still confused and uncertain, it's on a much higher plane, d'you see, and at least I know I'm bewildered about the really fundamental and important facts of the universe."\\
Treatle nodded. "I hadn't looked at it like that," he said, "But you're absolutely right. He's really pushed back the boundaries of ignorance."
--> Discworld scientists at work


->They both savoured the strange warm glow of being much more ignorant than ordinary people, who were only ignorant of ordinary things.
--> Discworld scientists at work


->They may have been ugly. They may have been evil. But when it came to poetry in motion, [[EldritchAbomination the Things]] had all the grace and coordination of a deck-chair.


->"They say there's dwarf mines under the Ramtops," she said inconsequentially. "My, but them little buggers is in for a surprise."
--> Granny reflects on Esk's methods of lighting a fire.


-> For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks.

[[folder: Mort]]
->"It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever," he said. "Have you thought of going into teaching?"


->Only one creature could have duplicated [[OhCrap the expressions on their faces]], and that would be a pigeon who has heard not only that Lord Nelson has got down off his column but has also been seen buying a 12-bore repeater and a box of cartridges.


-> "My granny says that dying is like going to sleep," Mort added, a shade hopefully.
-> [[AC:I wouldn't know. I have done neither.]]


-> "Pardon me for living, I'm sure."
-> [[AC:No-one gets pardoned for living.]]


->Although [[SinisterScythe the scythe]] isn't pre-eminent among the weapons of war, anyone who has been on the wrong end of, say, a peasants' revolt will know that in skilled hands it is fearsome.


->The only things known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Weedle. He reasoned like this: you can't have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir ''instantaneously''. Presumably, he said, there must be some elementary particles -- kingons, or possibly queons -- that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, in mid-flight, they strike an anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expanded because, at that point, the bar closed.


->[[AC:I don't know about you]], he said, [[AC:But I could murder a curry.]]


->Poets have tried to describe Ankh-Morpork. They have failed. Perhaps it's the sheer zestful vitality of the place, or maybe it's just that a city with a million inhabitants and no sewers is rather robust for poets, who prefer daffodils and no wonder.


->It is a fact that although the Death of the Discworld is, in his own words, an [[AC:Anthropomorphic Personification]], he long ago gave up using the traditional skeletal horses, because of the bother of having to stop all the time to wire bits back on.


->Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote.


-> [[AC:I ushered souls into the next world. I was the grave of all hope. I was the ultimate reality. I was the assassin against whom no lock would hold.]]
-> "Yes, point taken, but do you have any particular skills?"


-> "''Sodomy non sapiens''."


->"You won't get away with this," said Cutwell. He thought for a bit and added, "Well, [[KarmaHoudini you will probably get away with it]], but you'll feel bad about it on your deathbed and you'll wish -- "\\
He stopped talking.


->"You like it?" he said to Mort, in pretty much the same tone of voice people used when they said to St George, "You killed a ''what''?"
-->On [[GargleBlaster scumble]]

->"He remembered the knowledge. He remembered his mind feeling as cold as ice and limitless as the night sky. He remembered being summoned into reluctant existence at the moment the first creature lived, in the certain knowledge that he would outlive life until the last being in the universe passed to its reward, when it would then be his job, figuratively speaking, to put the chairs on the tables and turn the lights off.
->He remembered the loneliness."
-->Mort remembering how it's like to be Death (Note: Death 'putting the chairs on the tables' at the end of time is mentioned later in ''TheSandman'', probably a ShoutOut.)

[[folder: Guards! Guards!]]
->"[...] a number of offences of murder by means of a blunt instrument, to whit, a dragon, and many further offences of generalized abetting [...]"


->"Have another drink, not-Corporal Nobby?" said Sergeant Colon unsteadily.\\
"I do not mind if I do, not-Sgt Colon," said Nobby.
--> The joys of working undercover


->[[AC:Fabricati diem, Pvnc.]]
-->The motto of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch


->A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.


-> There was a thoughtful pause in the conversation as the assembled Brethren mentally divided the universe into the deserving and the undeserving, and put themselves on the appropriate side.


->All dwarfs have beards and wear up to twelve layers of clothing. Gender is more or less optional.


->All dwarfs are by nature dutiful, serious, literate, obedient and thoughtful people whose only minor failing is a tendency, after one drink, to rush at enemies screaming "Arrrrrrgh!" and axing their legs off at the knee.


->People who are rather more than six feet tall and nearly as broad across the shoulders often have uneventful journeys. People jump out at them from behind rocks then say things like, "Oh. Sorry. I thought you were someone else."


->It was possibly the most circumspect advance in the history of military manoeuvres, right down at the bottom end of the scale that things like the Charge of the Light Brigade are at the top of.

->'''Vetinari:'''You think there are the good people and the bad people. You are wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.


->Lady Ramkin's bosom rose and fell like an empire.


-> '''Vimes:''' It's a metaphor of human bloody existence, a dragon. And if that wasn't bad enough, it's also a bloody great hot flying thing.


-> The three rules of the Librarians of Time and Space are: 1) Silence; 2) Books must be returned no later than the date last shown; and 3) [[BreadEggsMilkSquick Do not interfere with the nature of causality]].


->A number of religions in Ankh-Morpork still practiced human sacrifice, except that they didn't really need to practice any more because they had got so good at it.


-> Thunder rolled. It rolled a six.


-> "Right, you bastards, you're... you're geography!"


-> [[TropesAreTools The reason that cliches become cliches is that they are the hammers and screwdrivers in the toolbox of communication.]]

[[folder: Pyramids]]
->What our ancestors would really be thinking, if they were alive today, is: "Why is it so dark in here?"


->All assassins had a full-length mirror in their rooms, because it would be a terrible insult to anyone to kill them when you were badly dressed.


->The Ephebians made wine out of anything they could put in a bucket, and ate anything that couldn't climb out of one.


->Nature abhors dimensional abnormalities, and seals them neatly away so that they don't upset people. Nature, in fact, abhors a lot of things, including vacuums, ships called the "Marie Celeste", and the chuck keys for electric drills.


->There was not a lot that could be done to make [[WretchedHive Morpork]] a worse place. A direct hit by a meteorite, for example, would count as gentrification.

[[folder: Eric]]
->No enemies had ever taken Ankh-Morpork. Well ''technically'' they had, quite often; the city welcomed free-spending barbarian invaders, but somehow the puzzled raiders found, after a few days, that they didn't own their horses any more, and within a couple of months they were just another minority group with its own graffiti and food shops.


->Rincewind had been told that death was just like going into another room. The difference is, when you shout, "Where's my clean socks?", no-one answers.


->It was true about the time measurement as well. The Tezumen had realized long ago that everything was steadily getting worse and, having a terrible little-mindedness, had developed a complex system to keep track of how much worse each succeeding day was.


->"There's a door."\\
"Where does it go?"\\
"It stays where it is, I think."


->The trouble is that things ''never'' get better, they just stay the same, only more so.


->"So we're surrounded by absolutely nothing. There's a word for it. It's what you get when there's nothing left and everything's been used up."\\
"Yes. I think it's called the bill."


->"What're quantum mechanics?"\\
"I don't know. People who repair quantums, I suppose."


->The librarian was, ex officio, a member of the college council. No-one had been able to find any rule about orang-utans being barred, although they had surreptitiously looked very hard for one.


->[[AC:I hope we are not going to have any of this "Foul Fiend" business again.]]
--> Death gets summoned by the college council


->There had been some desultory talk about putting up a statue to Rincewind but, by the curious alchemy that tends to apply in these sensitive issues, this quickly became a plaque, then a note on the Roll of Honour, and finally a motion of censure for being improperly dressed.
--> Unseen University politics at work


->Any wizard bright enough to survive for five minutes was also bright enough to realise that if there was any power in demonology, then it lay with the demons. Using it for your own purposes would be like trying to beat mice to death with a rattlesnake.
-->Why summoning demons is a Bad Idea


->The gods of the Disc have never bothered much about judging the souls of the dead, and so people only go to hell if that's where they believe, in their deepest heart, that they deserve to go. Which they won't do if they don't know about it. This explains why it is so important to shoot missionaries on sight.


->The consensus seemed to be that if really large numbers of men were sent to storm the mountain, then enough might survive the rocks to take the citadel. This is essentially the basis of all military thinking.


->The sergeant put on the poker face which has been handed down from NCO to NCO ever since one protoamphibian told another, lower ranking protoamphibian to muster a squad of newts and Take That Beach.


->'''Eric:''' "What shall I do?"\\
'''Rincewind:''' "Well, if you see anything crawl out of the sea and try to breathe, you could try telling it not to bother."
-->At the Beginning of Time


->"Multiple exclamation marks," he went on, shaking his head, "are a sure sign of a diseased mind."


->The Supreme Life President of Hell wrote: "What business are we in???" He thought for a bit, and then carefully wrote, underneath: "We are in the damnation business!!!"

[[folder: Moving Pictures]]
-> The Librarian had seen many weird things in his time, but that had to be the 57th strangest.[[hottip:* :He had a tidy mind.]]


->"Woof bloody woof."
--> Gaspode the Wonder Dog


->It was the sort of thing you expected in the Street of Alchemists. The neighbours * preferred* explosions, which were at least identifiable and soon over. They were better than the smells, which crept up on you.


->The Archchancellor's most important job, as the Bursar saw it, was to sign things, preferably, from the Bursar's point of view, without reading them first.


->By and large, the only skill the alchemists of Ankh-Morpork had discovered so far was the ability to turn gold into less gold.


->"If you put butter and salt on it, it tastes like salty butter."
--> On popcorn


->Of course, it is very important to be sober when you take an exam. Many worthwhile careers in the street-cleansing, fruit-picking and subway-guitar-playing industries have been founded on a lack of understanding of this simple fact.


->And then you bit onto them, and learned once again that Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler could find a use for bits of an animal that the animal didn't know it had got. Dibbler had worked out that with enough fried onions and mustard people would eat ''anything''.


->"The thing is that Mr. Dibbler can even sell sausages to people who have bought them off him ''before''."


->"Why's it called Ming?" said the Archchancellor, on cue.\\
The Bursar tapped the pot. It went ''ming''.


->Azhural raised his staff. "It's fifteen hundred miles to Ankh-Morpork," he said. "[[TheBluesBrothers We've got three hundred and sixty-three elephants, fifty carts of forage, the monsoon's about to break and we're wearing... we're wearing... sort of things, like glass, only dark... dark glass things on our eyes...]]"


->People who used magic without knowing what they were doing usually came to a sticky end. All over the entire room, sometimes.


-> "It looks worse than you can imagine!"
-> "I can imagine some pretty bad things!"
-> "That's why I said ''worse''!"


->"Woof. In tones of low menace."


->"There's nothin' wrong with bein' a son of a bitch."


->"I can explain it in Dog, but you only listen in Human."


->"Well, 'scuse me. I was jus' tryin' to save the world."


->"If gharstely creatures from before the Dawna Time starts wavin' at you from under your bed, jus' you don't come complainin' to me."


->"Messin' around with girls in thrall to Creatures from the Void never works out, take my word for it."


->"Can't sing. Can't dance. Can handle a sword a little."


->"Did I hear things, or can that little dog speak?" said Dibbler.\\
"He says he can't," said Victor. Dibbler hesitated.\\
"Well," he said, "I suppose he should know."


->In retrospect, Victor was always a little unclear about those next few minutes. That's the way it goes. The moments that change your life are the ones that happen suddenly, like the one where you die.

[[folder: Reaper Man]]
->No one was avoiding him, it was just that an apparent random Brownian motion was gently moving everyone away.


->[[AC:There is no hope but us. There is no mercy but us. There is no justice. There's just us.]]


->People have believed for hundreds of years that newts in a well mean that the water's fresh and drinkable, and ''in all that time'' never asked themselves whether the newts got out to go to the lavatory.


->He'd never realized that, deep down inside, what he really wanted to do was make things go splat.


-> [[AC:Drop the scythe, and turn around slowly.]]


-> [[AC:No crown. No crown. Only the harvest.]]


->Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind.


->It is traditional, when loading wire trolleys, to put the most fragile items at the bottom.


->What's the good of having mastery over cosmic balance and knowing the secrets of fate if you can't blow something up?


->No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.


->On the fabled hidden continent of Xxxx, somewhere near the rim, there is a lost colony of wizards who wear corks around their pointy hats and live on nothing but prawns.


->"You know," said Windle, "it's a wonderful afterlife."


->"Being needed is important.
->[[AC: Yes. But why?]]
->"I don't know. How should I know? Because we're all in this together, I suppose. Because we don't leave our people in there. Because you're a long time dead. Because anything is better than being alone. Because humans are human."


->[[AC:Do you know why the prisoner in the tower watches the flight of birds?]]


->[[AC:What can the harvest hope for, if not for the care of the reaper man?]]

[[folder: Small Gods]]
->"Chain letters," said the Tyrant. "The Chain Letter to the Ephebians. Forget Your Gods. Be Subjugated. Learn to Fear. Do not break the chain -- the last people who did woke up one morning to find fifty thousand armed men on their lawn."


->"It's a god-eat-god world."


->"You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look."


->His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools -- the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans -- and summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, "You can't trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there's nothing you can do about it, so let's have a drink."


->One day, a tortoise will learn how to fly.


->History, contrary to popular theories, ''is'' kings and dates and battles.


->And it came to pass that in time the Great God Om spake unto Brutha, the ChosenOne: "[[SophisticatedAsHell Psst!]]"


->Brother Preptil, the master of the music, had described Brutha's voice as putting him in mind of a disappointed vulture arriving too late at the dead donkey.


->[[RunningGag "There's very good eating on one of these, you know."]]


->"[[EatTheDog Pets are always a great help in times of stress. And in times of starvation too, o'course.]]"


->Words are the litmus paper of the minds. If you find yourself in the power of someone who will use the word "commence" in cold blood, go somewhere else very quickly. But if they say "Enter", don't stop to pack.


->"Not a man to mince words. People, yes. But not words."


->[[ChessMotifs Bishops move diagonally. That's why they often turn up where the kings don't expect them to be.]]


->''Cuius testiculos habes, habeas cardia et cerebellum.''


->[[AC:[[ChessWithDeath Remind me again]]]], he said, [[AC:[[ChessWithDeath how the little horse-shaped ones move.]]]]


->Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off.


->The trouble with being a god is that you've got no one to pray to.


->[[PunchclockVillain There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.]]


->The people who really run organizations are usually found several levels down, where it is still possible to get things done.


->Guilt was the grease in which the wheels of the authority turned.


->Most gods find it hard to walk and think at the same time.


->When the least they could do to you was everything, then the most they could do to you suddenly held no terror.


->"What's a philosopher ?" said Brutha.\\
"Someone who's bright enough to find a job with no heavy lifting."


->"Slave is an Ephebian word. In Om we have no word for slave," said Vorbis.\\
"So I understand," said the Tyrant. "I imagine that fish have no word for water."


->"He says gods like to see an atheist around. Gives them something to aim at."


->"You're not one of us."\\
"I don't think I'm one of them, either," said Brutha. "I'm one of mine."


->Simony's eyes gleamed with the gleam of a man who had seen the future and found it covered with armour plating.


->"All holy piety in public, and all peeled grapes and self-indulgence in private."


->When you can flatten entire cities at a whim, a tendency towards quiet reflection and seeing-things-from-the-other-fellow's-point-of-view is seldom necessary.


->"Take it from me, whenever you see a bunch of buggers puttering around talking about truth and beauty and the best way of attacking Ethics, you can bet your sandals it's all because dozens of other poor buggers are doing all the real work around the place."


->"Why do you bother with him? He's had thousands of people killed!"\\
"Yes, but perhaps he thought that you wanted it."


->The figures looked more or less human. And they were engaged in religion. You could tell by the knives (it's not murder if you do it for a god).


->The trouble was that he was talking in philosophy, but they were listening in gibberish.


->"He's muffed it," said Simony. "He could have done ''anything'' with them. And he just told them the facts. You can't inspire people with facts. They need a cause. They need a symbol."


->"You can't find a hermit to teach you herming, because of course that rather spoils the whole thing."


->Om began to feel the acute depression that steals over every realist in the presence of an optimist.


->"All the other prophets came back with commandments!"\\
"Where'd they get them?"\\
"I ... suppose they made them up."\\
"You get them from the same place."


->Brutha tried to nod, and thought: I'm on everyone's side. It'd be nice if, just for once, someone was on mine.


->Probably the last man who knew how it worked had been tortured to death years before. Or as soon as it was installed. Killing the creator was a traditional method of patent protection.


->Give anyone a lever long enough and they can change the world. It's unreliable levers that are the problem.


->"We died for lies, for centuries we died for lies. Now we've got a truth to die for!"\\
"No. Men should die for lies. But the truth is too precious to die for."


->[[AC:You have perhaps heard the phrase that hell is other people?]]\\
"Yes. Yes, of course."\\
Death nodded. [[AC:In time]], he said, [[AC:you will learn that it is wrong.]]


->"I used to think that I was stupid, and then I met philosophers."


->"I like the idea of democracy. You have to have someone everyone distrusts," said Brutha. "That way, everyone's happy."


->"That's why it's always worth having a few philosophers around the place. One minute it's all Is Truth Beauty and Is Beauty Truth, and Does A Falling Tree in the Forest Make A Sound if There's No one There to Hear It, and then just when you think they're going to start dribbling one of 'em says, 'Incidentally, putting a thirty-foot parabolic reflector on a high place to shoot the rays of the sun at an enemy's ships would be a very interesting demonstration of optical principles.'"

[[folder: Lords and Ladies]]
->The Librarian looked out at the jolting scenery. He was sulking. This had a lot to do with the new bright collar around his neck with the word "PONGO" on it. Someone was going to suffer for this.

->"Kneel and deliver!"
--> Casanunda, the world's smallest lover turns highwaydwarf


->Nanny Ogg never did any housework herself, but she was the cause of housework in other people.


->Verence would rather cut his own leg off than put a witch in prison, since it'd save trouble in the long run and probably be less painful.


->[[AC:I like to think I am a picker-up of unconsidered trifles.]] Death grinned hopefully.


->Mustrum Ridcully did a lot for rare species. For one thing, [[EgomaniacHunter he kept them rare]].


->Using a metaphor in front of a man [[BluntMetaphorsTrauma as unimaginative as Ridcully]] was like a red flag to a bu-- was like putting something very annoying in front of someone who was annoyed by it.


->The thing about iron is that you generally don't have to think fast in dealing with it.


->Nanny Ogg looked under her bed in case there was a man there. Well, [[DirtyOldWoman you never knew your luck]].


->The chieftain had been turned into a pumpkin although, in accordance with the rules of universal humour, he still had his hat on.

->She was an incredibly comfortable person to be around, partly because she had a mind so broad it could accommodate three football fields and a bowling alley.
--> About Nanny Ogg

->In fact, the mere act of opening the box will determine the state of the cat, although in this case there were three determinate states the cat could be in: these being Alive, Dead, and Bloody Furious.


->The shortest unit of time in the multiverse is the New York Second, defined as the period of time between the traffic lights turning green and the cab behind you honking.


->"Hah, I can just see [[WilliamShakespeare a real playsmith]] putting ''donkeys'' in [[AMidsummerNightsDream a play]]!"


->Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, especially simian ones. They are not all that subtle.


->'''Magrat:''' Go ahead, bake my quiche.


->In the Beginning there was nothing, which exploded.
-->Pterry explains the Big Bang


->Remember, A Dragon is For Life, Not Just for Hogswatchnight
--> Motto of The Sunshine Home for Sick Dragons in Morphic Street, Please Leave Donations of Coal by Side Door.


->There have, in the course of decadent history, been many large wigs, often with build-in gewgaws to stop people having to look at boring hair all the time. There had been ones big enough to contain pet mice or clockwork ornaments. Mme Cupidor, mistress of Mad King Soup II, had one with a bird cage in it, but on special state occasions wore one containing a perpetual calendar, a floral clock and a take-away linguini shop.


->"This is a lovely party," said the Bursar to a chair, "I wish I was here."


->No matter what she did with her hair it took about three minutes for it to tangle itself up again, like a garden hosepipe in a shed [Which, no matter how carefully coiled, will always uncoil overnight and tie the lawnmower to the bicycles].


->And the child had a permanently runny nose and ought to be provided with a handkerchief or, failing that, a cork.


->It was here that the thaum, hitherto believed to be the smallest possible particle of magic, was successfully demonstrated to be made up of /resons/ (Lit.: 'Thing-ies') or reality fragments. Currently research indicates that each reson is itself made up of a combination of at least five 'flavours', known as 'up', 'down', 'sideways', 'sex appeal' and 'peppermint'.


->A heap of discarded garments by the bed suggested that Verence had mastered the art of hanging up clothes as practised by half the population of the world, and that he had equally had difficulty with the complex topological manoeuvres necessary to turn the socks the right way out.


->Chain-mail isn't much defence against an arrow. It certainly isn't when the arrow is being aimed between your eyes.


->It's not enough to be able to pick up a sword. You have to know which end to poke into the enemy.


->The Monks of Cool, whose tiny and exclusive monastery is hidden in a really cool and laid-back valley in the lower Ramtops, have a passing-out test for a novice. He is taken into a room full of all types of clothing and asked: Yo [[hottip:*: Cool, but not necessarily up to date.]], my son, which of these is the most stylish thing to wear? And the correct answer is: Hey, whatever I select.

[[folder: Men At Arms]]
->If the Creator had said, "Let there be light" in Ankh-Morpork, he'd have gotten no further because of all the people saying "What colour?"


->From the back, Vetinari looked like a carnivorous flamingo.


->Cuddy had only been a guard for a few days, but already he had absorbed one important and basic fact: it is almost impossible for anyone to be in a street without breaking the law.


->The Battle of Koom Valley is the only one known to history where both sides ambushed each other.


->Carrot was two metres tall but he'd been brought up as a dwarf, and then further up as a human.


->"Young Edward thinks that there is no lake of blood too big to wade through to put a rightful king on a throne, no deed too base in defence of a crown. [[TakeThat A romantic, in fact]]."


->The Ramkins were more highly bred than a hilltop bakery, whereas Corporal Nobbs had been disqualified from the human race for shoving.


->He was said to have the body of a twenty-five year old, although no one knew where he kept it.
-->On Nobby.


->'''[[TalkingAnimal Gaspode the Wonder Dog]]:''' Pride is all very well, but a sausage is a sausage.


->The river Ankh is probably the only river in the universe on which the investigators can chalk the outline of the corpse.


->The Alchemist's Guild is opposite the Gambler's Guild. Usually. [[StuffBlowingUp Sometimes it's above it, or below it, or falling in bits around it]].


->Sham Harga had run a successful eatery for many years by always smiling, never extending credit, and realizing that most of his customers wanted meals properly balanced between the four food groups: sugar, starch, grease and burnt crunchy bits.


->Sometimes it's better to light [[KillItWithFire a flamethrower]] than curse the darkness.


->Being a werewolf meant having the dexterity and jaw power to instantly rip out a man's jugular. It was a trick of her father's that had always annoyed her mother, especially when he did it just before meals.


->"It's got three keyboards and a hundred extra knobs, including twelve with '?' on them."
--> The Unseen University Organ, as designed by [[BunglingInventor B. S. Johnson]]


->[[TheUnintelligible The Librarian of Unseen University]] had unilaterally decided to aid comprehension by producing an Orang-utan/Human Dictionary. He'd been working on it for three months. It wasn't easy. He'd got as far as "Oook".


->"It could be a torture chamber or a dungeon or a hideous pit or anything!"\\
"It's just a student's bedroom, sergeant."\\
"You see?"


->The maze was so small that people got lost looking ''for'' it.
-->Bloody Stupid Johnson, for all your landscaping needs.


->He was a good copper. That had got said at every guard funeral Vimes had ever attended. If d probably be said even at Corporal Nobbs' funeral, although everyone would have their fingers crossed behind their backs. It was what you had to say.

[[folder: Maskerade]]
->The person on the other side was a young woman. Very obviously a young woman. There was no possible way that she could have been mistaken for a young man in any language, especially Braille.


->[[EvilLaugh Ahahahahaha! Ahahahaha! Aahahaha!]]\\
BEWARE!!!!!\\
Yrs sincerely\\
The Opera Ghost


->Nanny Ogg found herself embarrassed to even think about this, and this was unusual because embarrassment normally came as naturally to [[DirtyOldWoman Nanny]] as altruism comes to [[CatsAreMean a cat]].


->People who didn't need people needed people around to know that they were the kind of people who didn't need people.


->He had a unique stride: it looked as though his body was being dragged forward and his legs had to flail around underneath it, landing wherever they could find room. It wasn't so much a walk as a collapse, indefinitely postponed.


->She'd even given herself [[LetXBeTheUnknown a middle initial - X]] - which stood for "[[AwesomeMcCoolname someone who has a cool and exciting middle initial]]".


->"What sort of person," said Salzella patiently, "sits down and ''writes'' a maniacal laugh? And all those exclamation marks, you notice? Five? A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head. Opera can do that to a man."


->Most people in Lancre, as the saying goes, went to bed with the chickens and got up with the cows. [[hottip:footnote:Er. That is to say, they went to bed at the same time as the chickens went to bed, and got up at the same time as the cows got up. Loosely worded sayings can really cause misunderstandings.]]


->"...my father is the Emperor of Klatch and my mother is a small tray of raspberry puddings."


->Instead, people would take pains to tell her that beauty was only skin-deep, as if a man ever fell for an attractive pair of kidneys.


->A day ago the future had looked aching and desolate, and now it looked full of surprises and terror and bad things happening to people... If she had anything to do with it anyway.


->It was done far more often than the audiences ever realized -- when singers had a sore throat, or had completely dried, or had turned up so drunk they could barely stand, or, in one notorious instance many years previously, had died in the interval and subsequently sung their famous aria by means of a broom-handle stuck up their back and their jaw operated with a piece of string.


->After you'd known [[DumbBlonde Christine]] for any length of time, you found yourself fighting a desire to look into her ear to see if you could spot daylight coming the other way.


->"Well, basically there are two sorts of {{opera}},' said Nanny, who also had the true witch's ability to be confidently expert on the basis of no experience whatsoever. 'There's your heavy opera, where basically people sing foreign and it goes like "Oh oh oh, I am dyin', oh, I am dyin', oh, oh, oh, that's what I'm doin'", and there's your light opera, where they sing in foreign and it basically goes "Beer! Beer! Beer! Beer! I like to drink lots of beer!", although sometimes they drink champagne instead. That's basically all of opera, reely."


->The pre-luncheon drinks were going quite well, Mr Bucket thought. Everyone was making polite conversation and absolutely no one had been killed up to the present moment.


->Nanny could get a statue to cry on her shoulder and say what it really thought about pigeons.


->Greebo could, in fact, commit sexual harrassment simply by sitting very quietly in the next room.


->It is the fate of all banisters worth sliding down that there is something nasty waiting at the far end.

[[folder: Feet Of Clay]]
->"Bingeley bingeley beep!"


-> He hated the very idea of the world being divided into the shaved and the shavers. Or those who wore the shiny boots and those who cleaned the mud off them. Every time he saw Willikins the butler fold his, Vimes's, clothes, he suppressed a terrible urge to kick the butler's shiny backside as an affront to the dignity of man.


->[[AC:I am Death, not taxes. ''I'' turn up only once.]]


-> Slab: Jus' say "[=AarrghaarrghpleeassennononoUGH=]"
--> Detritus' war on drugs


-> And, while it was regarded as pretty good evidence of criminality to be living in a slum, for some reason owning a whole street of them merely got you invited to the very best social occasions.


-> There were no public health laws in Ankh-Morpork. It would be like installing smoke detectors in Hell.


->'''Vimes:''' Just because someone's a member of an ethnic minority doesn't mean they're not a nasty small-minded little jerk.


->You never ever volunteered. Not even if a sergeant stood there and said, "We need someone to drink alcohol, bottles of, and make love, passionate, to women, for the use of." There was ''always'' a snag. If a choir of angels asked for volunteers for Paradise to step forward, Nobby knew enough to take one smart pace to the rear.


->Today Is A Good Day For Someone Else To Die!


->Rumour is information distilled so finely that it can filter through anything. It does not need doors and windows -- sometimes it does not need people. It can exist free and wild, running from ear to ear without ever touching lips.


->'''Vetinari to Vimes:''' In all, I've had seventeen demands for your badge. Some want parts of your body attached. Why did you have to upset everybody?


->It was Carrot who'd suggested to the Patrician that hardened criminals should be given the chance to "serve the community" by redecorating the homes of the elderly, lending a new terror to old age and, given Ankh-Morpork's crime rate, leading to at least one old lady having her front room wallpapered so many times in six months that now she could only get in sideways.


->It was hard enough to kill a vampire. You could stake them down and turn them into dust and ten years later someone drops a drop of blood in the wrong place and ''guess who's back''? They returned more times than raw broccoli.

[[folder: Jingo]]
->[[TechnicallyASmile Vimes's grin]] was as funny as the one that moves very fast towards drowning men. And has a fin on top.


->"Taxation, gentlemen, is very much like dairy farming. The task is to extract the maximum amount of milk with the minimum of moo. And I am afraid to say that these days all I get is moo."


->She sighed again. She was familiar with the syndrome. They ''said'' they wanted a soulmate and helpmeet but sooner or later the list would include a skin like silk and a chest fit for a herd of cows.


->One of the universal rules of happiness is: always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual.

->'Look, sir, I know Angua. She's not the useless type. She doesn't stand there and scream helplessly. She makes other people do that.'

->"Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life."


->"''Veni, vici''... [[MagnificentBastard Vetinari]]."


->And there was nothing finer than a wizard dressed up formally, until someone could find a way of inflating a Bird of Paradise, possibly by using an elastic band and some kind of gas.


->"One o'clock pee em! Hello, Insert Name Here!"


->He had the look of a lawn mower just after the grass had organised a workers' collective. There was a definite suggestion that, deep inside, he knew this was not really happening. It could not be happening because this sort of thing did not happen. Any contradictory evidence could be safely ignored.


->It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.

[[folder: Carpe Jugulum]]
->"It's not a black and white issue. There are so many shades of grey."
->[[Main/BlackAndWhiteMorality "Nope."]]
->"Pardon?"
->"There's no greys, only white that's got grubby. I'm surprised you don't know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That's what sin is."
->"It's a lot more complicated than that--"
->"No. It ain't. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they're getting worried that they won't like the truth. People as things, that's where it starts."
->"Oh, I'm sure there are worse crimes--"
->"But they ''starts'' with thinking about people as things. . ."


->"But you read a lot of books, I'm thinking. Hard to have faith, ain't it, when you've read too many books?"


->"Nac mac Feegle wha hae!"


->In Ghat they believe in vampire watermelons, although folklore is silent about ''what'' they believe about vampire watermelons. Possibly they suck back.


->Perdita thought that not obeying rules was somehow ''cool''. Agnes thought that rules like "Don't fall into this huge pit of spikes" were there for a purpose.


->Lancre operated on the feudal system, which was to say, everyone feuded all the time and handed on the fight to their descendants.


->"I name you ... Esmeralda Margaret Note Spelling of Lancre!"


->There are many rhymes about magpies, but none of them is very reliable because they are not the ones the magpies know themselves.


->One or two of the old barrows had been exposed over the years, their huge stones attracting their own folklore. If you left your unshod horse at one of them overnight and placed sixpence on the stone, in the morning the sixpence would be gone and you'd never see your horse again, either...

->"You wouldn't let a poor old lady go off to confront monsters on a wild night like this, would you?"
->"So why should we care what happens to monsters?"
->"Would ''you'' go out alone on a night like this?"
->"Depends if I knew where Granny Weatherwax was."


->He was trying to find some help in the ancient military journals of General Tacticus, whose intelligent campaigning had been so successful that he'd lent his very name to the detailed prosecution of martial endeavour, and had actually found a section headed What to Do If One Army Occupies a Well-fortified and Superior Ground and the Other Does Not, but since the first sentence read "Endeavour to be the one inside" he'd rather lost heart.


-> "Remember -- that which does not kill us can only make us stronger."\\
"And that which ''does'' kill us leaves us ''dead''!"

[[folder: Night Watch]]
->"When Mister Safety Catch Is Not On, Mister Crossbow Is Not Your Friend."


->He hated being thought of as one of those people that wore stupid ornamental armour. It was gilt by association.


->"Don't put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That's why they're called revolutions. People die, and nothing changes."


->[[{{Metaphorgotten}} His movements could be called cat-like, except that he did not stop to spray urine up against things.]]

-> "Do you mean that most of them will be human, or that each individual will be mostly human?" [[hottip:*: After a while in Ankh-Morpork, you learned how to phrase that kind of question.]]


-> His glare ran from face to face, causing most of the squad to do an immediate impression of the Floorboard and Ceiling Inspectors Synchronized Observation Team.

-> We who think we are about to die will laugh at anything.


-> Ninety per cent of most magic merely consists of knowing one extra fact.


-> "And for close-up fighting, as your senior sergeant [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial I explicitly forbid you to investigate the range of coshes, blackjacks and brass knuckles sold by Mrs Goodbody at No. 8 Easy Street, at a range of prices and sizes to suit all pockets]], and [[ImplausibleDeniability should any of you approach me privately I absolutely will not demonstrate a variety of specialist blows suitable for these useful yet tricky instruments]]."


-> As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn't measure up.


-> "Good grief, you don't just pile stuff up, for gods' sake! A barricade is something you ''construct''! "


-> "What good would a statue be? It'd just inspire new fools to believe they're going to be heroes. They wouldn't want that. Just let them be. For ever."

[[folder: The Wee Free Men]]
-> People say things like 'listen to your heart', but witches learn to listen to other things too. It's amazing what your kidneys can tell you.

-> [[PhonyPsychic Ordinary fortune-tellers tell you what you want to happen]]; witches tell you what's going to happen whether you want it to or not. Strangely enough, [[CassandraTruth witches tend to be more accurate but less popular.]]

-> 'I can see we're going to get along like a house on fire. There may be no survivors.'

-> 'But sometimes it's so hard to find half a mind when you need one.'

->'''Toad:''' 'Er . . . you want to bring them back, then?'
->'''Tiffany:''' 'Yes!'
->'''Toad:''' 'It's just that's something not many people have ever wanted to do. They're not like brownies. If you get Nac Mac Feegles in the house, it's usually best to move away.'


-> 'Them as can do, has to do for them as can't. And someone has to speak up for them as has no voices.'
-->- Granny Aching

-> That was how it worked. No magic at all. But that time it had been magic. And it didn't stop being magic just because you found out how it was done.

-> [[ImpossiblyDeliciousFood This wasn't food; it was what food became if it had been good and had gone to food heaven.]]

-> [[YouAreNotAlone 'I never cried for Granny because there was no need to! She has never left me!']]

-> This Queen woman, whoever she was, had been stealing children [[BlatantLies but Roland had beaten her, oh yes,]] and helped these two young children to get back as well. ... Obviously the girl had been very brave (this was the Baron speaking) [[DudeWheresMyRespect but, well, she was nine, wasn't she?]] And didn't even know how to use a sword! Whereas [[FramedForHeroism Roland]] had fencing lessons at his school. . .

[[folder: A Hat Full Of Sky]]
-> [[ArcWords ''Sheep's wool, Jolly Sailor tobacco and turpentine.'']]

-> Wishes needed thought. She was never likely to say, out loud, 'I wish that I could marry a handsome prince,' but knowing that if you did [[LiteralMinded you'd probably open the door to find a stunned prince, a tied-up priest and a Nac Mac Feegle grinning cheerfully and ready to act as Best Man]] definitely [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor made you watch what you said]].


-> Admittedly - and it took some admitting - [[CharacterDevelopment he was a lot less of a twit than he had been]]. On the other hand, [[SpoiledBrat there had been]] such a [[UpperClassTwit lot of twit to begin with]].


-> 'Taint what a horse ''looks'' like. It's what a horse ''be''.'


-> She was a witch and a teacher and that's a terrible combination. They want things to be ''right''. They like things to be ''correct''. If you want to upset a witch you don't have to mess around with charms and spells, you just have to put her in a room with a picture that's hung slightly crooked and watch her squirm.

-> The beef stew tasted, indeed, just like beef stew and not, just to take an example ''completely'' and ''totally'' at random, stew made out of the last poor girl who'd worked here.


-> There was a sliding noise and a tinkle exactly like the tinkle a spoon makes when it's put back amongst the other spoons, who have missed it and are anxious to hear its tales of life amongst the frighteningly pointy people.

-> 'Oh no! Witches are all equal. We don't have things like head witches. That's ''quite'' against the spirit of witchcraft. Besides, [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial Mistress Weatherwax would never allow that sort of thing]].'


-> 'Sorry aboot this,' it said. I talk to my knees, but they dinnae listen to me.'


-> That's the job of Third Thoughts: First and Second Thoughts might understand your current tragedy, but ''something'' has to remember that you haven't eaten since lunch time.


-> 'It's pronouned [[ItIsPronouncedTroPAY Ah-Wij]].'
--> Mrs. Letice Earwig

->Lovely to look at
-> Nice to hold
-> If you drop it
-> [[ShopliftAndDie You get torn apart by wild horses]]
--> Seen on a crystal ball at [[ProudMerchantRace Zakzak]]'s shop


-> It's an unfair world, child. Be glad you have friends.


-> It was dreadful when your own thoughts tried to gang up on you.


-> She had a momentary picture of Petulia standing in front of some horrible raging thing, but it wasn't as funny as she'd first thought. [[CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass Petulia ''would'' stand in front of it, shaking with terror, her useless amulets clattering, scared almost out of her mind . . . but not backing away]]. She'd thought there might be people facing something horrible here, and she'd come ''anyway''.


-> It was followed by a long scream of rage mixed with a roar of complaint: '[=AAaargwannawannaaaagongongonaargggaaaa=] BLOON!' which is the traditional sound of a very small child learning that with balloons, as with life itself, it is important to know ''when not to let go of the string''. The whole point of balloons is to teach small children this.


-> ''We heard a song, it went 'Twinkle twinkle little star...' What power! What wondrous power! You can take a billion trillion tons of flaming matter, a furnace of unimaginable strength, and turn it into a little song for children! [[HumansAreSpecial You build little worlds, little stories, little shells around your minds and that keeps infinity at bay and allows you to wake up in the morning without screaming!]]''


-> 'I'm made up of the memories of my parents and grandparents, all my ancestors. They're in the way I look, in the colour of my hair. And I'm made up of everyone I've ever met who's changed the way I think. So who is "me"?'


-> There's no shame in pity.


-> And . . . Annagramma? [[BewareTheNiceOnes Don't you]] ''[[BewareTheNiceOnes ever]]'' [[BewareTheNiceOnes dare interrupt me again as long as you live]]. Don't you dare. [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome Don't you ]]''[[CrowningMomentOfAwesome dare!]]'' I mean it.

[[folder: I Shall Wear Midnight]]
-> ''[[ArcWords The hare runs into the fire.]] The hare runs into the fire. The fire, it takes her, she is not burned. The fire, it loves her, she is not burned. The hare runs into the fire. The fire, it loves her, she is free.''

-> 'Poison goes where poison’s welcome. And there’s always an excuse, isn’t there, to throw a stone at the old lady who looks funny. It’s always easier to blame somebody. And once you’ve called someone a witch, then you’d be amazed how many things you can blame her for.’
--> - Mrs. Proust


-> '''Wee Mad Arthur''': ‘Whereas ye are a bunch of thieving drunken reprobates and scoff-laws with no respect for the law whatsoever!’
-> '''Rob Anybody''': ‘Would you no’ mind adding the words drunk and disorderly? We wouldnae want to be sold short here.’


-> ‘No, don’t say that it would be impossible for even a small witch to get inside an eggshell without crushing it, because that is what we in the craft would call a ''logical argument'' and therefore [[HumansAreMorons no one who wanted to believe that witches sank ships would pay any attention to it.]]
--> - [[spoiler:Eskarina Smith]]

-> It seemed to her, looking down the length of the hall, that you didn’t need to grind the faces of the poor if you taught them to do their own grinding.

-> ‘I was unfortunately born clever, miss, and I’ve learned that [[ObfuscatingStupidity sometimes it’s not such a good idea to be all that clever]]. Saves trouble.’
--> - Preston

-> I got packed off to be an apprentice priest in the Church of Om. I quite liked that; I learned a lot of interesting words, but they threw me out for asking too many questions, such as, “Is this really true or what?”’
--> - Preston

-> There is a lot of folklore about equestrian statues, especially the ones with riders on. There is said to be a code in the number and placement of the horse’s hooves: if one of the horse’s hooves is in the air, the rider was wounded in battle; two legs in the air means that the rider was killed in battle; three legs in the air indicates that the rider got lost on the way to the battle; and four legs in the air means that the sculptor was very, very clever. Five legs in the air means that there’s probably at least one other horse standing behind the horse you’re looking at; and the rider lying on the ground with his horse lying on top of him with all four legs in the air means that the rider was either a very incompetent horseman or owned a very bad-tempered horse.

-> ‘It’s just for people who think that witchcraft is all about flowers and love potions and dancing around without your drawers on - something I can’t imagine any real witch doing … Well, maybe [[DirtyOldWoman Nanny Ogg]], when the mood takes her.’

-> 'She wasn’t executed, by the way. I think she wants everybody to know that. [[NoodleIncident It was simply a freak accident involving a flight of stairs, a cat, and a scythe.]]’
--> - Letitia, about the headless ghost

-> It didn’t help very much at this point, as a small human skeleton walked out of the wall, through the library shelves as though they were smoke, and disappeared. It had been holding a teddy bear. It was one of those things that the brain files under ‘something I would rather not have seen’.

-> 'You are, you know, an extremely unusual witch. As far as I can tell, you have a natural talent for making cheese, and as talents go, it is a pretty good talent to have. The world needs cheese-makers. A good cheese-maker is worth her weight in, well, cheese. So you were not born with a talent for witchcraft.’ ... 'People say you don’t find witchcraft; witchcraft finds you. [[TheUnchosenOne But you’ve found it, even if at the time you didn’t know what it was you were finding, and you grabbed it by its scrawny neck and made it work for you.]]’
--> - [[spoiler:Eskarina Smith]]


-> [[GoodIsNotNice We do right, we don’t do nice.]]
--> - what Granny Weatherwax always says


-> ‘Don’t meddle in the affairs of witches because they clout you around the ear.’
--> - Preston’s granny


-> ‘[[CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming So who watches the witches? Who cares for the people who care for the people? Right now, it looks like it needs to be me.]]’
--> - Preston


-> From Tiffany’s point of view, a good funeral was one where the main player was very old.


-> ‘When I am old, I shall wear midnight. But not today.’


-> By the blinking of my eyes, something wicked this way dies.

->[[AC:Drop the scythe, and turn around slowly.]]


->{{AC:No crown. No crown. Only the harvest.]]

->The Monks of Cool, whose tiny and exclusive monastery is hidden in a really cool and laid-back valley in the lower Ramtops, have a passing-out test for a novice. He is taken into a room full of all types of clothing and asked: Yo [[hottip:footnote: Cool, but not necessarily up to date.]], my son, which of these is the most stylish thing to wear? And the correct answer is: Hey, whatever I select.

->The Monks of Cool, whose tiny and exclusive monastery is hidden in a really cool and laid-back valley in the lower Ramtops, have a passing-out test for a novice. He is taken into a room full of all types of clothing and asked: Yo[[hottip:footnote: Cool, but not necessarily up to date.]], my son, which of these is the most stylish thing to wear? And the correct answer is: Hey, whatever I select.

!Discworld/EqualRites

!Discworld/{{Mort}}

!Discworld/GuardsGuards

!Discworld/{{Pyramids}}

!Discworld/{{Eric}}

!Discworld/MovingPictures

!Discworld/ReaperMan

!Discworld/SmallGods

!Discworld/LordsAndLadies

->The Monks of Cool, whose tiny and exclusive monastery is hidden in a really cool and laid-back valley in the lower Ramtops, have a passing-out test for a novice. He is taken into a room full of all types of clothing and asked: Yo, my son, which of these is the most stylish thing to wear? And the correct answer is: Hey, whatever I select.


!Discworld/MenAtArms

!Discworld/InterestingTimes

!Discworld/{{Maskerade}}

!Discworld/FeetOfClay

!Discworld/{{Hogfather}}

!Discworld/{{Jingo}}

!Discworld/CarpeJugulum

!Discworld/NightWatch

!Discworld/TheWeeFreeMen

!Discworld/AHatFullOfSky

!Discworld/IShallWearMidnight

-> ‘It’s just for people who think that witchcraft is all about flowers and love potions and dancing around without your drawers on – something I can’t imagine any real witch doing … Well, maybe [[DirtyOldWoman Nanny Ogg]], when the mood takes her.’

->She'd even given herself [[LetXBeTheUnknown a middle initial - X]] - which stood for "[[PerditaXDream someone who has a cool and exciting middle initial]]".

->"Now we've got a truth to die for!"\\

-->Mort remembering how it's like to be Death (Note: Death 'putting the chairs on the tables' at the end of time is mentioned in TheSandman, so one of the two is probably a shout out.)

-->Mort remembering how it's like to be Death (Note: Death 'putting the chairs on the tables' at the end of time is mentioned in TheSandman, so one of the two is probably a shout out.

-->Mort remembering how it's like to be Death (Note: Death 'putting the chairs on the tables' at the end of time is mentioned in [[The Sandman]], so one of the two is probably a shout out.

-->Mort remembering how it's like to be Death

-> [[AC:I WOULDN'T KNOW. I HAVE DONE NEITHER.]]

-> [[AC:NO-ONE GETS PARDONED FOR LIVING.]]

->[[AC:I DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOU]], he said, [[AC:BUT I COULD MURDER A CURRY.]]

-> [[AC:I USHERED SOULS INTO THE NEXT WORLD. I WAS THE GRAVE OF ALL HOPE. I WAS THE ULTIMATE REALITY. I WAS THE ASSASSIN AGAINST WHOM NO LOCK WOULD HOLD.]]

->[[AC:DROP THE SCYTHE, AND TURN AROUND SLOWLY.]]

->[[AC:WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT FOR THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN?]]

->[[AC:[[ChessWithDeath REMIND ME AGAIN]]]], he said, [[AC:[[ChessWithDeath HOW THE LITTLE HORSE-SHAPED ONES MOVE.]]]]

->[[AC:YOU HAVE PERHAPS HEARD THE PHRASE THAT HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE?]]\\

Death nodded. [[AC:IN TIME]], he said, [[AC:YOU WILL LEARN THAT IT IS WRONG.]]

!Dicworld/{{Pyramids}}

->Of course, it is very important to be sober when you take an exam. Many worthwhile careers in the street-cleansing, fruit-picking and
subway-guitar-playing industries have been founded on a lack of understanding of this simple fact.


->And then you bit onto them, and learned once again that Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler could find a use for bits of an animal that the animal didn't know
it had got. Dibbler had worked out that with enough fried onions and mustard people would eat ''anything''.

-> [[TropesAreTools The reason that clichés become clichés is that they are the hammers and screwdrivers in the toolbox of communication.]]