"“Are you worthy?” said the woman. “What sort of question is that to ask a stranger?” “An interesting and possibly revealing one. Do you think the world is a better place with you in it, and would you do me the courtesy of actually thinking about your answer rather than pulling one off the ‘affronted’ rack?” I’m afraid there’s far too much of that these days. People believe that acting and thinking are the same thing.” (p. 314)"

""It can't be intelligent, can it?" said the Bursar."

"I suppose there's not some kind of magic you don't know about?"

"Then there was a silence. It was the particularly wary silence of something making no noise. (p. 124)"

"The Shades, in brief, were an abode of discredited gods and unlicensed thieves, ladies of the night and peddlers in exotic goods, alchemists of the mind and strolling mummers; in short, all the grease on civilization's axle."

""Huh! Priests!" said Mr. Shoe. "They're all the same. Always telling you that you're going to live again after you're dead, but you just try it and see the look on their faces!" (p. 131)"

"The rising sun managed to peek around the vast column of smoke that forever rose from Ankh-Morpork, City of Cities, illustrating almost up to the edge of space that smoke means progress or, at least, people setting fire to things. (pp. 323-324)"

"For I am the crowd and I am the ball I am the triumph and the blame I am the turf, the pies, the All Always and ever, I am the Game. It matters not who won or lost Nothing is the score you made Fame is a petal that curls in the frost But I will remember how you played. (p. 395)"

"Bill Door made the mistake millions of people had tried before with small children in slightly similar circumstances. He resorted to reason. (p. 159)"

"It was, as he was wonderfully well placed to know, merely putting off the inevitable. But wasn't that what living was all about? (p. 277)"

"Sometimes what is legal isn’t what is right, and sometimes it needs a witch to tell the difference. And sometimes a copper too, if you have the right kind of copper. Clever people know this. Stupid people don’t. And the trouble is, stupid people can be oh so very clever."

"The Archchancellor was the first one to recover."

"It's not old Windle. Old Windle was a lot older!"

"“How many languages do you speak, you…Nutt?” “Three dead and twelve living, sir,” said Nutt. “Really. Really,” said Ridcully, as though filing this away and trying not to think How many of them were alive before you murdered them? (pp. 229-230)"

"I see evil when I look in my shaving mirror. It is, philosophically, present everywhere in the universe in order, apparently, to highlight the existence of good. I think there is more to this theory, but I tend to burst out laughing at this point. (p. 236)"

"Wizards don't believe in gods in the same way that most people don't find it necessary to believe in, say, tables. They know they're there, they know they're there for a purpose, they'd probably agree that they have a place in a well-organized universe, but they wouldn't see the point of believing, of going around saying, "O great table, without whom we are as naught." Anyway, either the gods are there whether you believe or not, or exist only as a function of the belief, so either way you might as well ignore the whole business and, as it were, eat off your knees. (p. 28)"

"Was that justice? Was that a proper reward for being a firm believer in reincarnation for almost 130 years? You come back as a corpse?"

"In a general sort of way everyone knew they were going to die, even the common people. No one knew where you were before you were born, but when you were born, it wasn't long before you found you'd arrived with your return ticket already punched. (pp. 11-12)"

"Every day took an age to go by, which was odd, because days plural went past like a stampede. (p. 13)"

"Intellectually, Ridcully maintained his position for two reasons. One was that he never, ever, changed his mind about anything. The other was that it took him several minutes to understand any new idea put to him, and this is a very valuable trait in a leader, because anything anyone is still trying to explain to you after two minutes is probably important and anything they give up after a mere minute or so is almost certainly something they shouldn't have been bothering you with in the first place. (p. 38)"

"A man could be dogmatic, and that was all right, or he could be stupid, and no harm done, but stupid and dogmatic at the same time was too much, especially fluxed with body odor. (p. 226)"

"Why is there a certain cast of the military mind which leads sensible people to do again, with gusto, what didn’t work before? (p. 236)"

"In the hall of the house of Death is a clock with a pendulum like a blade but with no hands, because in the house of Death there is no time but the present. (There was, of course, a present before the present now, but that was also the present. It was just an older one.) (p. 14)"

"Perhaps the magic would last. Perhaps it wouldn't. But then, what does? (p. 355; closing words)"

"'No one knows how to do officering, Fred. That's why they're officers. If they'd knew anything, they'd be sergeants.'"

"“I’m sorry we seem to have loaded you down a bit. I’m sure it wasn’t deliberate.” “I’m sure it wasn’t, too, sir. Very little around here is.” Ponder sighed. “I’m afraid that unthinking delegation and prevarication and procrastination are standard practice here.” (pp. 209-210)"

"A lot hinges on the fact that, in most circumstances, people are not allowed to hit you with a mallet. They put up all kinds of visible and invisible signs that say “Do not do this” in the hope that it’ll work, but if it doesn’t, then they shrug, because there is, really, no real mallet at all. (p. 225)"

"Up in the gloom the heads of dead animals haunted the walls. The Ramkins seemed to have endangered more species than an ice age. (p. 349)"

"Each man thought: one of the others is bound to say something soon, some protest, and then I'll murmur agreement, not actually say anything, I'm not as stupid as that, but definitely murmur very firmly, so that the others will be in no doubt that I thoroughly disapprove, because at a time like this it behooves all decent men to nearly stand up and be almost heard… But no one said anything. The cowards, each man thought."

"The Patrician took a sip of his beer. “I have told this to few people, gentlemen, and I suspect I never will again, but one day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I’m sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged onto a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature’s wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that’s when I first learned about evil. It is built into the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior. (pp. 236-237)"

""Down there," he said, "are people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any iniquity. All out of a kind of humdrum, everyday badness. Not the really high, creative loathesomeness of the great sinners, but a sort of mass-produced darkness of the soul. Sin, you might say, without a trace of originality. They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they don't say no." (p. 337)"

"One said, That is the point. The word is him. Becoming a personality is inefficient. We don't want it to spread. Supposing gravity developed a personality? Supposing it decided to like people?"

"Something wonderful, if you took the long view, was about to happen."

"Glenda had decided tonight that she couldn’t read unwritten rules. (p. 226)"

"That was how you got to be a power in the land, he thought. You never cared a toss about whatever anyone else thought and you were never, ever, uncertain about anything. (p. 348)"

"Right, you bastards, you're... you're geography— (p. 302)"

""... a number of offences of murder by means of a blunt instrument, to whit, a dragon, and many further offenses of generalized abetting to be more specifically ascertained later. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to be summarily thrown into a piranha tank. You have the right to trial by ordeal." (p. 332)"

"“It’s the real stuff. Champagne.” “What? I thought only nobby people drank that!” “No, just people with money, love. Sometimes it’s the same thing.” (p. 160)"

"Weapons got you killed, often because you were holding one. (p. 180)"

""What if it's just a thousand-to-one chance?" said Colon agonizedly."

"This was one of those points where the Trousers of Time bifurcated themselves, and if you weren't careful you'd go down the wrong leg—(p. 335)"

""When you really need them the most," he said, "million-to-one chances always crop up. Well-known fact." (p. 292)"

"Now the air was gray with old smoke and mist shreds, but on a clear day it was possible to see Cori Celesti, home of the gods. Site of the home of the gods, anyway. They lived in Dunmanifestin, the stuccoed Valhalla, where the gods faced eternity with the kind of minds that were at a loss to know what to do to pass a wet afternoon. They played games with the fates of men, it was said. Exactly what game they thought they were playing at the moment was anyone's guess."

"Something was very wrong. "Is that you, Brother Doorkeeper?" he ventured."

"In theory, something should fit, but all she ever found was facts, which are so unbecoming. (p. 149)"

"“It’s positively an offense against morality.” “How? Where? Only in your heads, I feel.” (p. 189)"

"What's up, Sarge? Do you want to live forever?"

"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. (p. 265)"