Discworld

"As a lifelong uniformed man, a three-striped peg that had found a three-striped hole very early in its career, he subscribed automatically and unthinkingly to the belief that officers as a class could not put their own trousers on without a map. He conscientiously excluded Vimes and Carrot from the list, automatically elevating them to the rank of honorary sergeant. (p. 78)"

"The little flickering part of his brain that was still sparking coherent thought through the fog of mind-numbing terror that filled Colon’s head was telling him that he was so far out of his depth that the fish had lights on their noses. (p. 95)"

"Yes, he did have a clean desk. But that was because he was throwing all the paperwork away. (p. 95)"

"He was, in fact, functionally literate. That is, he thought of reading and writing like he thought about boots—you needed them, but they weren’t supposed to be fun, and you got suspicious about people who got a kick out of them. (p. 95)"

"Vimes hated and despised the privileges of rank, but they had this to be said for them: At least they meant that you could hate and despise them in comfort. (p. 111)"

"“And now it appears that we have reached what Sergeant Colon persists in referring to as an imp arse.” (p. 130)"

"You can find your average, amateur killers on every street. They’re mostly deranged or drunk or some poor woman who’s had a hard day and the husband has raised his hand once too often and suddenly twenty years of frustration takes over. Killing a stranger without malice or satisfaction, other than the craftsman’s pride in a job well done, is such a rare talent that armies spend months trying to instill it into their young soldiers. Most people will shy away from killing people they haven’t been introduced to. (p. 134)"

"“When I pointed out that you were an aristocrat, he—” “I am not an—well, I’m not really a—” “Yes, Your Grace. But if you’ll be advised by me, a lot of diplomacy lies in appearing to be a lot more stupid than you are. You’ve made a good start, Your Grace.” (p. 144)"

"The document was handed back, hurriedly. Vimes could read the body language, even written smaller than usual—there was probably an expensive problem here, so the guards were inclined to leave it to someone who earned more money than they did. (p. 173)"

"“Is there some problem?” said Vimes, catching up with the fast-moving Dee. “We have no problems.” Ah, he’s already lied to me, thought Vimes. We’re being diplomatic. (p. 175)"

"“When people say ‘we must move with the times’ they really mean ‘you must do it my way.’” (p. 181)"

"She moved like someone who had grown used to her body and, in general, looked like what Vimes had heard described as “a woman of a certain age.” He’d never been quite certain what age that was. (p. 188)"

"“I believe you vere an alcoholic, Sir Samuel.” “No,” said Vimes, completely taken aback, “I was a drunk. You have to be richer than I was to be an alcoholic.” (p. 189)"

"Lord Vetinari, I know, believes that information is currency. But everyone knows that currency has alvays been information. Money doesn’t need to talk, it merely has to listen. (p. 192)"

"I haven’t been sent to a coronation. I’ve been sent to a war that hasn’t started yet. (p. 193)"

"Well, he thought, so this is diplomacy. It’s lying, only for a better class of people. (p. 196)"

"And this was diplomacy, too, he thought, when you let your mouth chatter away while you watched people’s eyes. It’s just like being a copper. (p. 198)"

"“We were expecting one of the more...experienced...diplomats...” “Oh, I can hand around the thin cucumber sandwiches like anyone,” said Vimes. “And if you want little golden balls of chocolate piled up in a heap, I’m your man.” (p. 199)"

"“We’ve always been against a police force in Bonk,” said the baroness. “We feel it interferes with the liberty of the individual.” “Well, I have certainly heard that argument advanced,” said Vimes. “Of course, it depends on whether the individual you are thinking of is yourself or the one climbing out of the bathroom,” he noted the grimace, “window with the family silver in a sack.” (p. 199)"

"I don’t fink this is one of dem accidents dat happens by accident. (p. 203)"

"Yet another word for diplomat, Vimes mused, was “spy.” The only difference was that the host government knew who you were. The game was to outwit them, presumably. (p. 205)"

"“Good grief! You don’t think—” “No, I don’t think, sir, I’m a civil servant. I advise other people, mmm, mmm. Then they think. (p. 209)"

"“We are at war with the trolls!” “Well, that’s what diplomacy is all about, isn’t it?” said Vimes. “A way to stop being at war? Anyway, I understand it’s been going on for five hundred years, so obviously no one is trying very hard.” (p. 221)"

"Better any king than chaos. (p. 228)"

"“The innocent have nothing to fear.” The news that they have nothing to fear is guaranteed to strike fear into the hearts of innocents everywhere. (p. 243)"

"He smacked the club down again. He roared. There were no words there. It was a sound from before words. If there was any meaning in it at all, it was a lament that he couldn’t cause enough pain. (p. 276)"

"Practically from the moment she’d been able to talk she’d been taught how to listen. (p. 298)"

"“No crime has been committed!” “I’m a policeman,” said Vimes. “I can always find a crime.” (p. 308)"

"Now this he understood. It wasn’t damn politics, where good and bad were just, apparently, two ways of looking at the same thing or, at least, were described like that by the people who were on the side Vimes thought of as “bad.” It was all too complicated and, where it was complicated, it meant that someone was trying to fool you. (pp. 340-341)"

"I’m sorry, but we all have to learn that lesson. Integrity makes very poor armor. (p. 342)"

"There were a lot of things he could say. “Son of a bitch!” would have been a good one. Or he could say “Welcome to civilization!” He could have said “Laugh this one off!” He might have said “Fetch!” But he didn’t, because if he had said any of those things, then he’d know that what he had just done was murder. (pp. 344-345)"

"“Didn’t you worry about the future?” “No.” “Why the hell not?” “It hasn’t happened yet.” (p. 353)"

"All he knew was that you couldn’t hope to try for the big stuff, like world peace and happiness, but you might just about be able to achieve some tiny deed that’d make the world, in a small way, a better place. Like shooting someone. (pp. 359-360)"

"The world is made up of four elements: Earth, Air, Fire and Water. This is a fact well known even to Corporal Nobbs. It’s also wrong. There’s a fifth element, and generally it’s called Surprise. (p. 5)"

"For example, the dwarfs found out how to turn lead into gold by doing it the hard way. The difference between that and the easy way is that the hard way works. (p. 6)"

"“Ah, Mr. Worde. Times is hard in the hot sausage trade,” said Dibbler. “Can’t make both ends meat, eh?” said William. (p. 8)"

"He felt a bit sorry that he’d pointed out the mistake. Probably no one would have noticed in any case. Ankh-Morpork people considered that spelling was a sort of optional extra. They believed in it the same way they believed in punctuation; it didn’t matter where you put it, so long as it was there. (p. 15)"

"They were small, brightly colored, and happy little creatures who secreted some of the nastiest toxins in the world, which is why the job of looking after the large vivarium where they happily passed their days was given to first-year students, on the basis that if they got things wrong there wouldn’t be too much education wasted. (p. 19)"

"In fact he was incurably insane and hallucinated more or less constantly, but by a remarkable stroke of lateral thinking his fellow wizards had reasoned that, in that case, the whole business could be sorted out if only they could find a formula that caused him to hallucinate that he was completely sane.†"

"“You know I’ve always wanted a paperless office—” “Yes, Archchancellor, that’s why you hide it all in cupboards and throw it out of the window at night.” (p. 21)"

"There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty. The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What’s up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don’t think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass! Who’s been pinching my beer? And at the other end of the bar the world is full of the other type of person, who has a broken glass, or a glass that has been carelessly knocked over (usually by one of the people calling for a larger glass), or who had no glass at all, because he was at the back of the crowd and had failed to catch the barman’s eye. (p. 21)"

"But too much reading had taken its toll. William found that he now thought of prayer as a sophisticated way of pleading with thunderstorms. (p. 23)"

"Going into land management was just about acceptable, but it seemed to William that land managed itself pretty well, on the whole. He was all in favor of the countryside, provided that it was on the other side of a window. (p. 23)"

"A military career somewhere was unlikely. William had a rooted objection to killing people he didn’t know. (p. 23)"

"“And these are your reasons, my lord?” “Do you think I have others?” said Lord Vetinari. “My motives, as ever, are entirely transparent.” Hughnon reflected that “entirely transparent” meant either that you could see right through them or that you couldn’t see them at all. (p. 31)"

"Kings and lords come and go and leave nothing but statues in a desert, while a couple of young men tinkering in a workshop change the way the world works. (p. 32)"

"I was merely endeavoring to indicate that if we do not grab events by the collar they will have us by the throat. (p. 33)"

"These dull gray blocks looked threatening. He could understand why they worried people. Put us together in the right way, they seemed to say, and we can be anything you want. We could even be something you don’t want. We can spell anything. We can certainly spell trouble. The ban on movable type wasn’t exactly a law. But he knew the engravers didn’t like it, because they had the world operating just as they wanted it, thank you very much. And Lord Vetinari was said not to like it, because too many words only upset people. And the wizards and the priests didn’t like it because words were important. An engraved page was an engraved page, complete and unique. But if you took the leaden letters that had previously been used to set the words of a god, and then used them to set a cookery book, what did that do to the holy wisdom? For that matter, what would it do to the pie? As for printing a book of spells, and then using the same type for a book of navigation—well, the voyage might go anywhere. (pp. 37-38)"

"“From what I hear he mostly doesn’t do a —ing thing!” he complained. “Yeah,” said Mr. Pin smoothly. “One on the hardest things to do properly, in politics.” (p. 43)"

"He’d found a hard truth less hard than an easy lie. (p. 45)"