Discworld

"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)"

"“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)"

"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)"

"It appears, Mister Lipwig, that you do not understand the nature of our relationship. I ask, very politely, for you to achieve something, bearing in mind that there are other ways I could ask, and it is your job to get things done. (p. 200)"

"A kind of ratchet formed in people’s minds: here is the new thing and here it is. And yesterday you never thought about it and after today you don’t know what you would do without it. That was what the technology was doing. It was your slave but, in a sense, it might be the other way round. (p. 281)"

"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)"

"But it didn’t do to get angry, at least not yet. Anger was a weapon to be honed and treasured and used only at the moment yielding most premium. (p. 313)"

"Mr. Lipwig, are you talking about magic here? I am an engineer, I am. We don’t ’old wi’ magic. (p. 322)"

"As his Lordship head pointed out: “if you take enough precautions, you never need to take precautions.” (p. 358)"

"But the reward for lots of work seemed to be lots more. If you dug the biggest hole, they just gave you a bigger shovel…"

"She had always liked the scullery. It smelled of hard work being done properly. Here there were also spiders, mostly hiding around the bottles and jars on the shelves, but she thought scullery spiders didn’t really count. Live and let live."

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

"And at the end of time, living is about fightin’ against everything."

"What do we do now, Nobby?" "Arrest the suspect, sarge," said Corporal Nobbs, saluting smartly. "What suspect, Nobby?" "Him," said Nobby, prodding the corpse with his boot. "I call it highly suspicious, being dead like that." "But he's the victim, Nobby. He was the one what was killed." "Ah, right. So we can get him as an accessory, too." "Nobby—" "He's been drinking, too. We could do him for being dead and disorderly."

"Fools rush in, but they are laggards compared to little old ladies with nothing left to fear."

"It was the same in just about every trade. Sooner or later someone decided it needed organizing, and the one thing you could be sure of was that the organizers weren’t going to be the people who, by general acknowledgement, were at the top of their craft. They were working too hard. To be fair, it generally wasn’t done by the worst, neither. They were working hard, too. They had to. No, it was done by the ones who had just enough time and inclination to scurry and bustle. And, to be fair again, the world needed people who scurried and bustled. You just didn’t have to like them very much."

"Granny Weatherwax was not an advertisement for witchcraft. Oh, she was one of the best at it, no doubt about it. At a certain kind, certainly. But a girl starting out in life might well say to herself: “Is this it? You worked hard and denied yourself things and what you got at the end was hard work and self-denial?”"

"Keeping secrets made you powerful. Being powerful earned you respect. Respect was hard currency."

"Unlike the magic of wizards, the magic of witches did not usually involve the application of much raw power. The difference is that between hammers and levers. Witches generally tried to find the small point where a little change made a lot of result. To make an avalanche you can either shake the mountain, or maybe you can just find exactly the right place to drop a snowflake."

"“I did start out in witchcraft to get boys, to tell you the truth.” “Think I don’t know that?” “What did you start out to get, Esme?” Granny stopped, and looked up at the frosty sky and then down at the ground. “Dunno,” she said at last. “Even, I suppose.”"

"And a witch used what was to hand, too. All that fiddlin’ with coloured candles and crystal balls and whatnot, that was fine for them as needed it, but at a pinch you use what you could reach. In this case she reached down and lifted the heavy wooden lid of the well and looked down into the dark waters. There was nothing there. But there was never anything in a crystal, either. There was simply emptiness, which said: fill me up."

"According to the trollish philosopher Plateau, “if you wants to understan’ an enemy, you gotta walk a mile in his shoes. Den, if he’s still your enemy, at least you’re a mile away and he’s got no shoes.”"

"“Firstly,” said Ponder, “Mr. Pessimal wants to know what we do here.” “Do? We are the premier college of magic!” said Ridcully. “But do we teach?” “Only if no alternative presents itself,” said the Dean. “We show ’em where the library is, give ’em a few little chats, and graduate the survivors. If they run into any problems, my door is always metaphorically open.” “Metaphorically, sir?” said Ponder. “Yes. But technically, of course, it’s locked.” “Explain to him that we don’t do things, Stibbons,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “We are academics.”"

"“Yes, but what do you do? And have you been doing more of it in the past six months than in the previous six?” “Well, if we’re asking that kind of question, Archchancellor, what do you do?” said the Dean testily. “I administer, Dean,” said Ridcully calmly. “Then we must be doing something, otherwise you’d have nothing to administrate.” “That comment strikes at the very heart of the bureaucratic principle, Dean, and I shall ignore it.”"

"Put it on the agenda for this time next year, Mr. Stibbons. No, perhaps the year after next. You can't hurry urgency, I've always said so."

"There are no inconsistencies in the Discworld books, merely alternative pasts."

"With magic, you can turn a frog into a prince. With science, you can turn a frog into a Ph.D and you still have the frog you started with."

"Magicians and scientists are, on the face of it, poles apart. Certainly, a group of people who often dress strangely, live in a world of their own, speak a specialized language and frequently make statements that appear to be in flagrant breach of common sense have nothing in common with a group of people who often dress strangely, speak a specialized language, live in ... er ..."

"'Where did you get the idea for this, Mister Stibbons?' said Ridcully."

""I somehow feel I need to ask, Mister Stibbons...what chance is there of this just blowin' up and destroyin' the entire university?'"

"As humans, we have invented lots of useful kinds of lie. As well as lies-to-children ('as much as they can understand') there are lies-to-bosses ('as much as they need to know') lies-to-patients ('they won't worry about what they don't know') and, for all sorts of reasons, lies-to-ourselves. Lies-to-children is simply a prevalent and neccesary kind of lie. Universities are very familiar with bright, qualified school-leavers who arrive and then go into shock on finding that biology or physics isn't quite what they've been taught so far. 'Yes, but you needed to understand that,' they are told, 'so that now we can tell you why it isn't exactly true.' Discworld teachers know this, and use it to demonstrate why universities are truly storehouses of knowledge: students arrive from school confident that they know very nearly everything, and they leave years later certain that they know practically nothing. Where did the knowledge go in the meantime? Into the university, of course, where it is carefully dried and stored."

"'We've got about ten seconds to the next discharge, sir,' said Ponder. 'Only...now that the balls have gone it will simply earth itself...'"

"“Why would you need my help?” asked Annagramma sulkily. —We need allies, the hiver thought with Tiffany’s mind. They can help protect us. If necessary, we can sacrifice them. Other creatures will always want to be friends with the powerful, and this one loves power—"

"There was an air about her that she was taking notes about the world in order to draw up a list of suggestions for improvements."

"It was hard to look at the assembled ranks of the Nac Mac Feegle and remember that they were, technically, fairies. It was like watching penguins swimming underwater and having to remember that they were birds."

"To be looked at by Annagramma was to know that you’d already taken up too much of her valuable time."

"“Mistress Weatherwax is the head witch, then, is she?” “Oh no!” said Miss Level, looking shocked. “Witches are all equal. We don’t have head witches. That’s quite against the spirit of witchcraft.” “Oh, I see,” said Tiffany. “Besides,” Miss Level added, “Mistress Weatherwax would never allow that sort of thing.”"

"When a dog attacks a sheep, the other sheep run away to a safe distance and then turn and watch. They don’t gang up on the dog. They’re just happy it’s not them."

"“You looked at her diary?” said Miss Level, horrified. “Why?” Really, she thought later, she should have expected the answer. “Cuz it wuz locked,” said Daft Wullie."

"Always face what you fear. Have just enough money, never too much, and some string. Even if it’s not your fault, it’s your responsibility. Witches deal with things. Never stand between two mirrors. Never cackle. Do what you must do. Never lie, but you don’t always have to be honest. Never wish. Especially don’t wish upon a star, which is astronomically stupid. Open your eyes, and then open your eyes again."

"He hadn’t been a husband for very long, but upon marriage men get a whole lot of extra senses bolted into their brain, and one is there to tell a man that he’s suddenly neck deep in real trouble."

"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."

"Feegles from the other clans had all turned up for the celebration, because if there’s one thing a Feegle likes more than a party, it’s a bigger party, and if there’s anything better than a bigger party, it’s a bigger party with someone else paying for the drink."

"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 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 made you watch what you said."

"“Young Toby? He’s been dead for fifteen years. And Mary was the old man’s daughter, she died quite young. Mr. Weavall is very shortsighted, but he sees better in the past.” Tiffany didn’t know what to reply except: “It shouldn’t be like this.” “There isn’t a way things should be. There’s just what happens, and what we do.”"

"Knowing things is magical, if other people don’t know them."

"Petulia spent a lot of time trying to find out what other people thought so that she could think the same way. It would be impossible to have an argument with her. Tiffany had to stop herself from saying ‘The sky is green’ just to see how long it would take for Petulia to agree. But she liked her. You couldn’t not like her. She was restful company."

"Admittedly—and it took some admitting—he was a lot less of a twit than he had been. On the other hand, there had been such a lot of twit to begin with."