The Wit & Wisdom of Discworld - By Terry Pratchett Page 0,34
soldiers think a lot about fighting, but serious professional soldiers think a lot more about food and a warm place to sleep, because these are two things that are generally hard to get, whereas fighting tends to turn up all the time.
*
Humans! They lived in a world where the grass continued to be green and the sun rose every day and flowers regularly turned into fruit, and what impressed them? Weeping statues. And wine made out of water! A mere quantum-mechanistic tunnel effect, that’d happen anyway if you were prepared to wait zillions of years. As if the turning of sunlight into wine, by means of vines and grapes and time and enzymes, wasn’t a thousand times more impressive and happened all the time …
*
No other library anywhere, for example, has a whole gallery of unwritten books - books that would have been written if the author hadn’t been eaten by an alligator around chapter 1, and so on. Atlases of imaginary places. Dictionaries of illusory words. Spotters’ guides to invisible things. Wild thesauri in the Lost Reading Room. A library so big that it distorts reality and has opened gateways to all other libraries, everywhere and everywhen …
*
‘Prince Lasgere of Tsort asked me how he could become learned, especially since he hadn’t got any time for this reading business. I said to him, “There is no royal road to learning, sire,” and he said to me, “Bloody well build one or I shall have your legs chopped off. Use as many slaves as you like.” A refreshingly direct approach, I always thought. Not a man to mince words. People, yes. But not words.’
*
Gods are not very introspective. It has never been a survival trait. The ability to cajole, threaten and terrify has always worked well enough. 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.
Which had led, across the multi-verse, to men and women of tremendous brilliance and empathy devoting their entire lives to the service of deities who couldn’t beat them at a quiet game of dominoes. For example, Sister Sestina of Quirm defied the wrath of a local king and walked unharmed across a bed of coals and propounded a philosophy of sensible ethics on behalf of a goddess whose only real interest was in hairstyles, and Brother Zephilite of Klatch left his vast estates and his family and spent his life ministering to the sick and poor on behalf of the invisible god F’rum, generally considered unable, should he have a backside, to find it with both hands, should he have hands. Gods never need to be very bright when there are humans around to be it for them.
*
Mountains rise and fall, and under them the Turtle swims onward. Men live and die, and the Turtle Moves. Empires grow and crumble, and the Turtle Moves. Gods come and go, and still the Turtle Moves. The Turtle Moves.
*
Words are the litmus paper of the mind. 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.
THE Fairies are back - but this time they don’t just want youir teeth…
Granny Weatherwax and her tiny coven are tip against real elves. It’s Midsummer Night.
No time for dreaming…
With full supporting cast of dwarfs, wizards, trolls, Morris dancers and one orang-utan. And lots of hey-nonny-nonny and blood all over the place.
Nanny Ogg never did any housework herself, but she was the cause of housework in other people.
*
Lancre was so small that you couldn’t lie down without a passport.
*
WILLIAM SCROPE.
‘Yes?’
IF YOU WOULD PLEASE STEP THIS WAY.
‘Are you a hunter?’
I LIKE TO THINK I AM A PICKER-UP OF UNCONSIDERED TRIFLES.
Death grinned hopefully. Scrope’s post-physical brow furrowed.
‘What? Like … sherry, custard … that sort of thing?’
*
‘Someone got killed up here.’
‘Oh, no,’ moaned Nanny Ogg.
‘A tall man. He had one leg longer’n the other. And a beard. He was probably a hunter.’
‘How’d you know all that?’
‘I just trod on ’im.’
*
‘Hope Magrat does all right as queen,’ said Nanny.
‘We taught her everything she knows,’ said Granny Weatherwax.
‘Yeah,’ said Nanny Ogg. ‘D’you think … maybe … ?’
‘What?’
‘D’you think maybe we ought to have taught her everything we know?’
*
The thing about the Librarian was that no one noticed he was an orangutan any more, unless a visitor to the University happened to point it out. In which case someone would say, ‘Oh, yes. Some kind of magical