"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) Do not interfere with the nature of causality. (p. 223)"

"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)"

"Disgusting, this sort of thing, really," mused Sergeant Colon. "People goin' around in coaches like this when there's people with no roof to their heads."

"The last rats of Brother Watchtower's self-confidence fled the sinking ship of courage. (p. 201)"

"It would have been nice to have a bit of cosmic explanation at this point, but the universe never gave you explanations, it just gave you more questions. (p. 122)"

"Possibly in the dark hours of a sleepless night some of them might have remembered the subsequent events and formed a pretty good and gut-churning insight, to whit, that one of the things sometimes forgotten about the human spirit is that while it is, in the right conditions, noble and brave and wonderful, it is also, when you get right down to it, only human. (pp. 267-268)"

"Moist was not going to be intimidated by a bunch of small people who were giving themselves airs. He was never one for protocol—it got in the way and often concealed nasty and dangerous things. (p. 247)"

"That’s the trouble, you see. When you’ve had hatred on your tongue for such a long time, you don’t know how to spit it out. (p. 284)"

"He looked up at the hooded figure beside him."

"People were stupid, sometimes. They thought the Library was a dangerous place because of all the magical books, which was true enough, but what made it really one of the most dangerous places there could ever be was the simple fact that it was a library. (p. 183)"

"Noble dragons don't have friends. The nearest they can get to the idea is an enemy who is still alive. (p. 188)"

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

"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)"

"This seemed absolutely right, to Vimes's way of thinking. There was no difference at all between the richest man and the poorest beggar, apart from the fact that the former had lots of money, food, power, fine clothes, and good health. But at least he wasn't any better. Just richer, fatter, more powerful, better dressed and healthier. It had been like that for hundreds of years. (p. 173)"

""I thought, in Nature, the defeated animal just rolls on its back in submission and that's an end of it," said Vimes, as they clattered after the disappearing swamp dragon."

"Sad to say, but I’ve come to the conclusion that if you keep turning the other cheek they’ll go on slapping you in the face. (p. 288)"

"Tiffany sighed. “Being a witch is a man’s job: that’s why it needs women to do it.”"

"What're them fat saggy things on that shield?"

"You can't give me my job back," repeated Vimes. "It was never yours to take away. I was never an officer of this city, or an officer of the king, or an officer of the Patrician. I was an officer of the law. It might have been corrupted and bent, but it was law, of a sort. There isn't any law now except: "You'll get burned alive if you don't watch out". Where's the place in there for me?"

"Glenda enjoyed her job. She didn’t have a career; they were for people who could not hold down jobs. (p. 124)"

"“We can’t just drop everything, sir!” “Mister Lipwig. Is there something in the word tyrant you do not understand?” (p. 201)"

"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?"

"The villagers had said justice had been done, and she’d lost patience and told them to go home, then, and pray to whoever gods they believed in that it was never done to them. Because the smug face of virtue triumphant could be almost as horrible as wickedness revealed."

"Disgusting, really, her livin' in a room like this. She's got pots of money, sarge says, she's got no call livin' in ordinary rooms. What's the good of not wanting to be poor if the rich are allowed to go around livin' in ordinary rooms? Should be marble. (p. 139)"

"It always amazed Vimes how Nobby got along with practically everyone. It must, he'd decided, have something to do with the common denominator. In the entire world of mathematics there could be no denominator as common as Nobby. (p. 141)"

"“Thank you Mr. Forefather. Pretty soon there’ll be a lot of journalists coming to see all this and I’m sorry about that, but they turn up like flies.” “That’s all right, sir. Good for business. Journalists drink twice as much as anyone else and for twice as long.” (p. 191)"

"A dwarf who had been silent during the conclave in the cavern was remembering the old Djelibeybi legend about the way to get an ass down from the minaret, and of course the answer was you first have to teach it not to be an ass. But in what world could that ever happen when you’re dealing with grags? (p. 194)"

"By and large medical assistance was nonexistent and people had to die inefficiently, without the aid of doctors. (p. 136)"

"Anyway, we found we've got a lot in common. It's an amazing coincidence, but my grandfather once had his grandfather whipped for malicious lingering."

"It has been said that crowds are stupid, but mostly they are simply confused, since as an eyewitness the average person is as reliable as a meringue lifejacket. (p. 103)"

"It was amazing, this mystic business. You tell them a lie, and then when you don't need it any more you tell them another lie and tell them they're progressing along the road to wisdom. Then instead of laughing they follow you even more, hoping that at the heart of all the lies they'll find the truth. And bit by bit they accept the unacceptable. Amazing. (p. 116)"

""The females are always the worst," said another hunter gloomily. "I knew this cross-eyed gorgon once, oh, she was a terror. Kept turning her own nose to stone." (p. 123)"

"She hated people like him, who lived for the exercise of third-hand authority and loved every little bit of power they could grab. (p. 104)"

"The reason that clichés become clichés is that they are the hammers and screwdrivers in the toolbox of communication. (p. 146)"

"Moist was, by inclination, a stranger to the concept of two in the morning, a time that happened to other people. (p. 187)"

"The terrible fact was that when dwarfs schism, they schism…every deviation from the norm was treated as an attack on all that was truly dwarfish. (p. 195)"

"What exactly is it that they do eat?"

"It was possibly the most circumspect advance in the history of military maneuvers, right down at the bottom end of the scale that things like the Charge of the Light Brigade are at the top of. (p. 70)"

""Have another drink, not-Corporal Nobby?" said Sergeant Colon unsteadily."

"Dick just loved talking about Iron Girder and everything else to do with locomotion, but he was a straightforward man and the press of the Sto Plains could eat up for lunch straightforward man if he wasn’t careful. Moist, on the other hand, in the vicinity of the press, was as straightforward as a sackful of kaleidoscopes. (p. 110)"

"The smile Mr. de Worde gave as he stepped from the platform on to the footplate cemented this moment onto the front page, assuming this journey was a success—although you had to be aware that it would also make the front page if the engine blew up. Journalism was, well, after all, journalism. (p. 113)"

""'E's fighting in there!" he stuttered, grabbing the captain's arm."

"He couldn't help remembering how much he'd wanted a puppy when he was a little boy. Mind you, they'd been starving—anything with meat on it would have done. (p. 106)"

"In the trouble with madness was that the mad didn’t know they were mad. The grags came down heavily on those who did not conform and seemed not to realize that this was like stamping potatoes into the mud to stop them growing. (p. 195)"

"His age was indeterminate. But in cynicism and general world weariness, which is a sort of carbon dating of the personality, he was about seven thousand years old. (p. 55)"

"“You two have a history, I think,” said Nutt. “You are a sharp one, aren’t you? Quiet and sharp. Like a knife. Yeah, I suppose it was a history. I wanted it to be more of a geography, but she kept slappin’ my hand.” (p. 88)"

"A book has been taken. A book has been taken? You summoned the Watch," Carrot drew himself up proudly, "because someone's taken a book? You think that's worse than murder?"

"Lady Ramkin's bosom rose and fell like an empire. (p. 147)"

"But Nutt had a point. It was hard to argue with a man who insisted that he was not dead. (p. 114)"

"We are not difficult people, but the government drags its feet when it comes to cleaning out ze bandits, because, as you understand, bandits and governments ’ave so much in common that they might be interchangeable anywhere in the world…I see you smiling, Mr. Lipwig. Is something amusing? (p. 139)"