"And Unseen University, as even wizards realized at somewhere just below the top level of their minds, existed not to further magic but, in a very creative way, to suppress it. The world had seen what happened when wizards got their hands on enormous amounts of magical power. It had happened a long time ago and there were still some areas where you didn’t go, if you wanted to walk out on the same kind of feet that you’d had when you went in. Once upon a time the plural of “wizard” was “war”. But the great, open ingenious purpose of UU was to be the weight on the arm of magic, causing it to swing with grave majesty like a pendulum rather than spin with deadly purpose like a morningstar. Instead of hurling fireballs at one another from fortified towers the wizards learned to snipe at their colleagues over the interpretation of Faculty Council minutes, and long ago were amazed to find that they got just as much vicious fun out of it. They consumed big dinners, and after a really good meal and a fine cigar even the most rabid Dark Lord is inclined to put his feet up and feel amicable towards the world, especially if it’s offering him another brandy. And slowly, and by degrees, they absorbed the most important magical power of all, which is the one that persuades you to stop using all the others. (pp. 267-268)"

"Historians have pointed out that it is in times of plenty that people feel like going to war. In times of famine they’re simply trying to find enough to eat. When they’ve just enough to go round they tend to be polite. But when a banquet is spread before them, it’s time to argue over the place settings. (p. 267)"

"Ponder’s mind raced, and hit some horrible speed bumps in his imagination. (p. 264)"

"“Is it true that your life passes before your eyes before you die?” “Ghastly thought, really.” Rincewind shuddered. “Oh gods, I’ve just had another one. Suppose I am just about to die and this is my whole life passing in front of my eyes?” (p. 260)"

"Ridcully’s eyes twinkled behind the smoke and, not for the first time, Ponder suspected that the man was sometimes rather cleverer than he appeared. It would not be hard. (pp. 246-247)"

"He lay back with his head on a rock. Keep out of trouble and don’t get involved, that was the important thing. Look at those stars up there, with nothing to do all the time but sit there and shine. No one ever told them what to do, the lucky bastards... (p. 235)"

"Then another insight struck him at the speed of beer. Beer! It was only water, really, with stuff in it. Wasn’t it? And most of what was in it was yeast, which was practically a medicine and definitely a food. In fact, when you thought about it, beer was only a kind of runny bread, in fact, it’d be better to use some of the beer in the soup! Beer soup! A few brain cells registered their doubt, but the rest of them grabbed them by the collar and said hoarsely, people cooked chicken in wine, didn’t they? (p. 234)"

"A flash of inspiration struck him with all the force and brilliance that ideas have when they’re traveling through beer. (pp. 233-234)"

"Once a moderately jolly wizard camped by a dried-up waterhole under the shade of a tree that he was completely unable to identify. And he swore as he hacked and hacked at a can of beer, saying, “What kind of idiots put beer in tins?” (p. 232)"

"Mrs. Whitlow was walking some way ahead, humming to herself. The wizards took care to remain at a respectful distance. They were aware that in some kind of obscure way she’d won, although they hadn’t a clue what the game was. (pp. 227-228)"

"Here was where he’d always wanted to be, at the cutting edge of the envelope in the fast lane of the state of the art. (pp. 212-213)"

"Dear me, the purpose of the whole business, you see, is in fact to be the whole business. (p. 211)"

"It was, nevertheless, very peaceful. Rincewind sat bolt upright. He knew what was about to happen when things were peaceful. (p. 189)"

"“I suppose he wouldn’t have done anything stupid, would he?” he said. “Archchancellor, Ponder Stibbons is a fully trained wizard!” said the Dean. “Thank you for that very concise and definite answer, Dean” said Ridcully. (p. 187)"

"She had a very straightforward view of foreign parts, or at least those more distant than her sister’s house in Quirm where she spent a week’s holiday every year. They were inhabited by people who were more to be pitied than blamed because, really, they were like children.† And they acted like savages.††"

"Rincewind wasn’t certain how to deal with this. “No worries,” he said. This covered most things. (p. 181)"

"Daggy stepped forward, but only comparatively; in fact, his mates had all, without discussion, taken one step backwards in the choreography of caution. (p. 181)"

"Rincewind looked out across the sheep pens. He knew what sheep were, of course, and had come into contact with them on many occasions, although normally in the company of mixed vegetables. (p. 176)"

"Ponder shook his head. There were times when the desire to climb the thaumaturgical ladder was seriously blunted, and one of them was when you saw what was on top. (p. 170)"

"Usually they defined “listening” as a period in which you worked out what you were going to say next. (p. 169)"

"“I really couldn’t see the point of the whole business, to tell you the truth. Shouting, smiting, getting angry all the time...don’t think anyone was getting anything out of it, really. But the worst part...You know the worst part? The worst part was that if you actually stopped the smiting, people wandered off and worshipped someone else. Hard to believe, isn’t it? They’d say things like, ‘Things were a lot better when there was more smiting,’ and ‘If there was more smiting, it’d be a lot safer to walk the streets.’ Especially since all that’d really happened was that some poor shepherd who just happened to be in the wrong place during a thunderstorm had caught a stray bolt. And then the priests would say, ‘Well, we all know about shepherds, don’t we, and now the gods are angry and we could do with a much bigger temple, thank you.” “Typical priestly behavior,” sniffed the Dean. “But they often believed it!” the god almost wailed. “It was really so depressing. I think that before we made humanity, we broke the mold. There’d be a bad weather front, a few silly shepherds would happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and next thing you know it was standing room only on the sacrificial stones and you couldn’t see for the smoke.” (pp. 163-164)"

"The wizards drew closer. They were not, of course, afraid of gods, but gods tended to have uncertain tempers and a wise man kept away from them. (p. 162)"

"To be frank, I find religion rather offensive. (p. 161)"

"“Haven’t you noticed that by running away you end up in more trouble?” “Yes, but you see, you can run away from that too,” said Rincewind. “That’s the beauty of the system. Dead is only for once, but running away is for ever.” “Ah, but it is said that a coward dies a thousand deaths, while a hero dies only one.” “Yes, but it’s the important one.” (p. 150)"

"Never sick himself, he tended to the belief that sickness in other people was caused by sloppy thinking. (p. 147)"

"And he was pretty sure that there was no way you could get a cross between a human and a sheep. If there was, people would definitely have found out by now, especially in the more isolated rural districts. (p. 142)"

"A sign attached to the tower read: “Dijabringabeeralong: Check your Weapons.” “Yep, still got all mine, no worries,” said Mad. (p. 136)"

"The god hadn’t programmed this bit. The whole problem with evolution, he’d told himself, was that it wouldn’t obey orders. Sometimes, matter thinks for itself. (p. 135)"

"The god, almost alone among gods, thought questions were a good thing. He was in fact committed to people questioning assumptions, throwing aside old superstitions, breaking the shackles of irrational prejudice and, in short, exercising the brains their god had given them, except of course they hadn’t been given by any god, lord knows, so what they really ought to do was exercise those brains developed over millennia in response to the external stimuli and the need to control those hands with their opposable thumbs, another damn good idea that he was very proud of. Or would have been, of course, if he existed. (pp. 133-134)"

"There’s a certain kind of manager who is known by his call of “My door is always open” and it is probably a good idea to beat yourself to death with your own CV rather than work for him. In Ridcully’s case, however, he meant, “My door is always open because then, when I’m bored, I can fire my crossbow right across the hall and into the target just above the Bursar’s desk.” (p. 132)"

"Ponder felt the sea of mutual incomprehension rising around him, but he refused to drown. (p. 131)"

"Ponder struggled to find a crack in his Archchancellor’s brain into which could be inserted the crowbar of understanding, and for a few vain seconds thought he had found one. (p. 130)"

"“I think there may be one or two steps in your logic that I have failed to grasp, Mister Stibbons,” said the Archchancellor coldly. “I suppose you’re not intending to shoot your own grandfather, by any chance?” “Of course not!” snapped Ponder, “I don’t even know what he looked like. He died before I was born.” “Ah-hah!” (p. 130)"

"It had been going so well. They almost seemed up to speed. This may have been what caused Ponder to act like the man who, having so far fallen a hundred feet without any harm, believes that the last few inches to the ground will be a mere formality. (p. 129)"

"Discworld constellations changed frequently as the world moved through the void, which meant that astrology was cutting-edge research rather than, as elsewhere, a clever way of avoiding a proper job. It was amazing how human traits and affairs could so reliably and continuously be guided by a succession of big balls of plasma billions of miles away, most of whom have never even heard of humanity. (p. 127)"

"Above Ponder, he felt, were a lot of dead men’s shoes. And they had living men’s feet in them, and were stamping down hard. They never bothered to learn anything, they never bothered to remember anything apart from how much better things used to be, they bickered like a lot of children and the only one who ever said anything sensible said it in orangutan. (p. 122)"

"All bastards are bastards, but some bastards is bastards. (p. 114)"

"He hated weapons, and not just because they’d so often been aimed at him. You got into more trouble if you had a weapon. People shot you instantly if they thought you were going to shoot them. But if you were unarmed, they often stopped to talk. Admittedly, they tended to say things like, “You’ll never guess what we’re going to do to you, pal,” but that took time. And Rincewind could do a lot with a few seconds. He could use them to live longer in. (p. 114)"

"It wasn’t that he was against anyone saving the world, or whatever subset of it apparently wanted saving. He just felt that it didn’t need saving by him. (p. 110)"

"It was a road. At least, it was a long flat piece of desert with wheel ruts in it. Rincewind stared at it. A road. Roads went somewhere. Sooner or later they went everywhere. And when you got there, you generally found walls, buildings, harbors...boats. And incidentally a shortage of talking kangaroos. That was practically one of the hallmarks of civilization. (p. 110)"

"“And you know what I think about evolution, Mister Stibbons. If it happens, and frankly I’ve always considered it a bit of a fairy story, it has to happen fast. Look at lemmings, for one thing.” “Lemmings, sir?” “Right. The little blighters keep chargin’ over cliffs, right? And how many have ever changed into birds on the way down, eh? Eh?” “Well, none, of cou—” “There’s my point,” said Ridcully triumphantly. “And it’s no good one of them on the way down thinking, ‘Hey, maybe I should waggle my claws a bit,’ is it? No, what it ought to do is decide really positively about growing some real wings.” “What, in a couple of seconds? While they’re plunging towards the rocks?” “Best time.” “But lemmings don’t just turn into birds, sir!” “Lucky for them if they could, though, eh?” (p. 107)"

"He was not going to be found wanting when duty called. He did not intend to be found at all. (p. 97)"

"Rincewind settled back. “I’m glad I’m not religious,” he said. “It must be very complicated.” (p. 97)"

"“Why me?” The kangaroo scratched its nose. “’s got to be someone,” it said. (p. 86)"

"“I’m trying to remember how you tell the time by looking at the sun.” ”I should leave it for a while,” said the Senior Wrangler, squinting under his hand. “It’s too bright to see the numbers at the moment.” (p. 72)"

"In fact she moved with more than dignity, which is something that is given away free with kings and bishops; what she had was respectability, which is homemade out of cast iron. (p. 70)"

"“Last one into the water’s a man standing all by himself on the beach” he shouted. (p. 62)"

"Creators aren’t gods. They make places, which is quite hard. It’s men that make gods. This explains a lot. (p. 61)"

"“I’ve been lookin’ at him. He’s not even heroic. He’s just in the right place at the right time.” The old man indicated that this was maybe the definition of a hero. (p. 61)"