"We are never quits with those who oblige us," was Dantes' reply; "for when we do not owe them money, we owe them gratitude."

"Drunk, if you like; so much the worse for those who fear wine, for it is because they have bad thoughts which they are afraid the liquor will extract from their hearts;"

"How strange," continued the king, with some asperity; "the police think that they have disposed of the whole matter when they say, 'A murder has been committed,' and especially so when they can add, 'And we are on the track of the guilty persons.'"

[T]o learn is not to know; there are the learners and the learned. Memory makes the one, philosophy the other.

[L]earn ever to separate the king and the principle of royalty. The king is but man; royalty is the spirit of God. When you are in doubt as to which you should serve, forsake the material appearance for the invisible principle, for this is everything.

Mrs. Joe was a very clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite art of making her cleanliness more uncomfortable and unacceptable than the dirt itself. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and some people do the same by religion.

All tribal myths are true, for a given value of 'true'.

Something as artificial and human as an hour wouldn't last five minutes here.

Logic is a wonderful thing but doesn't always beat actual thought.

Rincewind awoke with a scream, to get it over with.

Creators aren't gods. They make places, which is quite hard. It's men that make gods. This explains a lot.

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.

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.

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.

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.

'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.'

Rincewind paused. He had always been the foremost exponent of the from rather than the to of running.

But still, one of the most basic rules for survival on any planet is never to upset someone wearing black leather.*

* This is why protesters against the wearing of animal skins by humans unaccountably fail to throw their paint over Hell's Angels.

That was the thing about fire. If you saw one, everyone went to put it out. Fire spread like wildfire.

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.

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.

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.*

* This is a very common hallucination, shared by most people.

[']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.'

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!

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 carefully knocked over (usually by one of the people calling for a larger glass), or who had no glass at all, because they were at the back of the crowd and had failed to catch the barman's eye.

'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.

It was hard to see Mr. Tulip's eyes, because of a certain puffiness probably caused by too much enthusiasm for things in bags.*

* Your Brain On Drugs is a terrible sight, but Mr. Tulip was living proof of the fact that so was Your Brain on a cocktail of horse liniment, sherbet and powdered water-retention pills.

If his body was a temple, it was one of those strange ones where people did odd things to animals in the basement, and if he watched what he ate it was only to see it wriggle.

'And there's the sign, Ridcully,' said the Dean. You have read it, I assume. You know? The sign which says "Do not, under any circumstances, open this door"?'

'Of course I've read it,' said Ridcully. 'Why d'yer think I want it opened?'

'Er...why?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

'To see why they wanted it shut, of course.'*

* This exchange contains almost all you need to know about human civilisation. At least, those bits of it that are now under the sea, fenced off or still smoking.

Downey stood up with some relief and walked over to his large drinks cabinet. His hand hovered over the Guild's ancient and valuable tantalus, with its labelled decanters of Mur, Nig, Trop and Yksihw.*

* It's a sad and terrible thing that high-born folk really have thought that the servants would be fooled if spirits were put into decanters that were cunningly labelled backwards. And also throughout history the more politically conscious butler has taken it on trust, and with rather more justification, that his employers will not notice if the whisky is topped up with eniru.

'You can't give her that!' she screamed. 'It's not safe!'

IT'S A SWORD said the Hogfather. THEY'RE NOT MEANT TO BE SAFE.

'She's a child!' shouted Crumley.

IT'S EDUCATIONAL.

'What if she cuts herself?'

THAT WILL BE AN IMPORTANT LESSON.

'I...think my name is Bilious. I'm the...I'm the Oh God of Hangovers.'

'There's a God of Hangovers?'

'An oh god,' he corrected. 'When people witness me, you see, they clutch their head and say "Oh God..." How many of you are standing here?'

'So mistletoe, in fact, symbolises mistletoe?'

'Exactly, Archchancellor,' said the Senior Wrangler, who was now just hanging on.

'Funny thing, that,' said Ridcully, in the same thoughtful tone of voice. 'That statement is either so deep it would take a lifetime to fully comprehend every particle of its meaning, or it is a load of absolute tosh. Which is it, I wonder?'

'It could be both,' said the Senior Wrangler desperately.

'And that comment,' said Ridcully, 'is either very perceptive, or very trite.'

'It might be bo--'

'Don't push it, Senior Wrangler.'

IT'S THE EXPRESSION ON THEIR LITTLE FACES I LIKE, said the Hogfather.

'You mean the sort of fear and awe and not knowing whether to laugh or cry or wet their pants?'

YES. NOW THAT IS WHAT I CALL BELIEF.

Then the Dean repeated the mantra that has had such a marked effect on the progress of knowledge through the ages.

'Why don't we just mix up absolutely everything and see what happens?' he said.

And Ridcully responded with the traditional response.

'It's got to be worth a try,' he said.

'I remember my father tellin' me some valuable advice about drinks,' said Ridcully. 'He said, "Son, never drink any drink with a paper umbrella in it, never drink any drink with a humourous name, and never drink any drink that changes colour when the last ingredient goes in. And never, ever, do this--"'

He dipped his finger into the beaker.

While evidence says that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, they're probably all on first steps.

Then you have The Story of the Emperor Who Had No Clothes.

But if you knew a bit more, it would be The Story of the Boy Who Got a Well-Deserved Thrashing from His Dad for Being Rude to Royalty, and Was Locked Up.

Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up.

'Could get a bit repetitive, master' said Clodpool.

'That is because you don't yet know how to deal with time', said Wen. 'But I will teach you to deal with time as you would deal with a coat, to be worn when necessary and discarded when not.'

'Will I have to wash it?' said Clodpool.

Wen gave him a long, slow look. 'That was either a very complex piece of thinking on your part, Clodpool, or you were just trying to overextend a metaphor in a rather stupid way. Which do you think it was?'

When you look into the abyss, it's not supposed to wave back.

'Sometimes I really think people ought to have to pass a proper exam before they're allowed to be parents. Not just the practical, I mean.'

Susan stopped. Of course someone would be that stupid. Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.

In the Second Scroll of Wen the Eternally Surprised a story is written concerning one day when the apprentice Clodpool, in a rebellious mood, approached Wen and spake thusly:

'Master, what is the difference between a humanistic, monastic system of belief in which wisdom is sought by means of an apparently nonsensical system of questions and answers, and a lot of mystic gibberish made up on the spur of the moment?'

Wen considered this for some time, and at last said: 'A fish!'

And Clodpool went away, satisfied.

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 ...

On Roundworld, things happen because the things want to happen.*

* In a manner of speaking. They happen because things obey the rules of the universe. A rock has no detectable opinion about gravity.

Sometimes, the best answer is a more interesting question.

This was turning out to be the longest winter in living memory, so long, in fact, that living memory itself was being shortened as some of the older citizens succumbed.

Much human ingenuity has gone into finding the ultimate Before.

The current state of knowledge can be summarized thus:

In the beginning, there was nothing, which exploded.

Other theories about the ultimate start involve gods creating the universe out of the ribs, entrails and testicles of their father.* There are quite a lot of these. They are interesting, not for what they tell you about cosmology, but for what they say about people. Hey, kids, which part do you think they made your town out of?

* Gods like a joke as much as anyone else.

Assassination was meat and drink to the Hunghung court; in fact, meat and drink were often the means.

'I reckon it was some kind of firework. They're very big on fireworks here.'

'You mean the sort of things where you light the blue touch paper and stick it up your nose?'*

* KIDS! Only very silly wizards with bad sinus trouble do this. Sensible people go off to a roped-off enclosure where they can watch a heavily protected man, in the middle distance, light (with the aid of a very long pole) something that goes 'fsst'. And then they can shout 'Hooray'.

'It's just that his memory's bad. We had a bit of trouble on the way over. I keep telling him, it's rape the women and set fire to the houses.'

'Rape?' said Rincewind. 'That's not very--'

'He's eighty-seven,' said Cohen. 'Don't go and spoil an old man's dreams.'

Probably the last sound heard before the Universe folded up like a paper hat would be someone saying, 'What happens if I do this?'

'But there are causes worth dying for,' said Butterfly.

'No, there aren't! Because you've only got one life but you can pick up another five causes on any street corner!'

'Good grief, how can you live with a philosophy like that?'

Rincewind took a deep breath.

'Continuously!'

WITH HIM HERE, EVEN UNCERTAINTY IS UNCERTAIN. AND I'M NOT SURE EVEN ABOUT THAT.

WHAT IS SO SURPRISING ABOUT BACON?

'I don't know. I suppose it comes as something of a shock to the pig.'

'There's a lot of waiting in warfare,' said Boy Willie.

'Ah, yes,' said Mr. Saveloy. 'I've heard people say that. They say there's long periods of boredom followed by short periods of excitement.'

'Not really, said Cohen. 'It's more like short periods of waiting followed by long periods of being dead.'

A crude hut of driftwood had been built on the long curve of the beach, although describing it as 'built' was a slander on skilled crude hut builders throughout the ages; if the sea had simply been left to pile the wood up it might have done a better job.

The senior wizard in a world of magic had the same prospects of long-term employment as a pogo stick tester in a minefield.

What the Burser failed to consider was that no more bangs doesn't mean they've stopped doing it, whatever it is. It just means they're doing it right.

Of course, it is very important to be sober when you take an exam. Many worthwhile careers in the street-cleaning, fruit-picking and subway-guitar-playing industries have been founded on a lack of understanding of this simple fact.

[N]o-one with their sleeves rolled up who walks purposefully with a piece of paper held conspicuously in their hand is ever challenged.

He'd looked at it's ramshackle organisation, such as it was, with the eye of a lifelong salesman. There seemed nowhere in it for him, but this wasn't a problem. There was always room at the top.

'She hwas dusting,' siad Mrs Whitlow, helpfully. When Mrs Whitlow was in the grip of acute class consciousness she could create aitches where nature never intended them to be.

Probably only one person in the world had been interested in whether the old man lived or died, and he'd been the first to know.

[I]nside every old person is a young person wondering what happened.

[T]here is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

When I like people immensely I never tell their names to any one. It seems like surrendering a part of them.

The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it.

[T]he one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception necessary for both parties.

[E]very portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the colored canvas, reveals himself.

Laughter is not a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is the best ending for one

Now, the value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it. Indeed, the probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it will not be coloured by either his wants, his desires, or his prejudices.

Nowadays people know the price of everything, and the value of nothing.

Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.

When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others.

He gives you good advice, I suppose. People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves.

Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name we gave to our mistakes.

To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.

'And what would humans be without love?'

RARE, said Death.

He sighed again. People were always trying this sort of thing. On the other hand, it was quite interesting to watch, and at least this was a bit more original than the usual symbolic chess game, which Death always dreaded because he could never remember how the knight was supposed to move.

* The vermine is a small black and white relative of the lemming, found in the cold Hublandish regions. It's skin is rare and highly valued, especially by the vermine itself; the selfish little bastard will do anything rather than let go of it.

This was the type of thief that could steal the initiative, the moment and the words right out of your mouth.

These weren't the normal city watch, cautious and genially corrupt. These were walking slabs of muscle and they were absolutely unbribable, if only because the Patrician could outbid anyone else.

After that one thing sort of led to another and pretty soon everyone was fighting to get something - either away, out or even.

It wasn't blood in general he couldn't stand the sight of, it was just his blood in particular that was so upsetting.

* Of course, Ankh-Morpork's citizens had always claimed that the river water was incredibly pure in any case. Any water that had passed through so many kidneys, they reasoned, had to be very pure indeed.

'My father always said that death is but a sleep,' said Conina.

'Yes, the hat told me that,' said Rincewind, as they turned down a narrow, crowded street between white adobe walls. 'But the way I see it, it's a lot harder to get up in the morning.'

'My father always said that it was pointless to undertake a direct attack against an enemy extensively armed with efficient projectile weapons,' she said.

Rincewind, who knew Cohen's normal method of speech, gave her a look of disbelief.

'Well, what he actually said,' she added, 'was never enter an arse- kicking contest with a porcupine.'

* The Hashishim, who derived their name from the vast quantities of hashish they consumed, were unique among vicious killers in being both deadly and, at the same time, inclined to giggle, groove to interesting patterns of light and shade on their terrible knife blades and, in extreme cases, fall over.

[A] popular spell at the time was Pelepel's Temporal Compressor, which on one occasion resulted in a race of giant reptiles being created, evolving, spreading, flourishing and then being destroyed in the space of about five minutes, leaving only its bones in the earth to mislead forthcoming generations completely.

The truth isn't easily pinned to a page. In the bathtub of history the truth is harder to hold than the soap, and much more difficult to find...

'I don't trust this man,' said Nijel. 'I try not to judge from first impressions, but I definitly think he's up to no good.'

'He had you thrown in a snake pit!'

'Perhaps I should have taken the hint.'

Wizards didn't kill ordinary people because a) they seldom noticed them and b) it wasn't considered sporting and c) besides, who'd do all the cooking and growing food and things. And killing a brother wizard with magic was nigh-well impossible on account of the layers of protective spells that any cautious wizard maintained about his person at all times.*

* Of course, wizards often killed each other by ordinary, non-magical means, but this was perfectly allowable and death by assassination was considered natural causes for a wizard.

Some people think this is paranoia, but it isn't. Paranoids only think everyone is out to get them. Wizards know it.

'I'm not going to ride on a magic carpet!' he hissed. 'I'm afraid of grounds!'

'You mean heights,' said Conina. 'And stop being silly.'

'I know what I mean! It's the grounds that kill you!'

There was a respectful silence, as there always is when large sums of money have just passed away.

Many people who had got to know Rincewind had come to treat him as a sort of two-legged miner's canary, and tended to assume that if Rincewind was still upright and not actually running then some hope remained.

'This is fun,' said Creosote. 'Me, robbing my own treasury. If I catch myself I can have myself flung into the snake pit.'

'But you could throw yourself on your mercy,' said Conina, running a paranoid eye over the dusty stonework.

'Oh, no. I think I would have to teach me a lesson, as an example to myself.'

'I can't hear anything,' said Nijel loudly. Nijel was one of those people who, if you say "don't look now", would immediately swivel his head like an owl on a turntable.

Too much magic could wrap time and space around itself, and that wasn't good news for the kind of person who had grown used to things like effects following things like causes.

They suffered from the terrible delusion that something could be done. They seemed prepared to make the world the way they wanted or die in the attempt, and the trouble with dying in the attempt was that you died in the attempt.

'Poor I don't mind,' said the Seriph. 'It's sobriety that is giving me difficulties.'

Take it from me, there's nothing more terrible than someone out to do the world a favour.

Wizards don't like philosophy very much. As far as they are concerned, one hand clapping makes a sound like 'cl'.

They thought that you could see life through books but you couldn't, the reason being that the words got in the way.

Mirrors had lead to one of the Church's innumerable schisms, one side saying that since they encouraged vanity they were bad, and the other side saying that since they reflected the goodness of Om they were holy.

Lancre operated on the feudal system, which was to say, everyone feuded all the time and handed on the fight to their descendants. The chips on some shoulders had been passed down for generations.

The smug mask of virtue triumphant could be almost as horrible as the face of wickedness revealed.

What had she ever earned? The reward for toil had been more toil. If you dug the best ditches they gave you a bigger shovel.

She'd never, ever asked for anything in return. And the trouble with not asking for anything in return was that sometimes you didn't get it.

There was something... sort of damp about him, the kind of helpless hopelessness that made people angry rather than charitable, the total certainty that if the whole world was a party he'd still find the kitchen.

'Will it be enough to know that the world is your oyster?'

Her forehead wrinkled in perplexity. 'Why should I want it to be some nasty little sea creature?' she said.

'Because they get eaten alive,' said the Count.

She was not, herself, hugely in favour of motherhood in general. Obviously it was necessary, but it wasn't exactly difficult. Even cats managed it. But women acted as if they'd been given a medal that entitled them to boss people around. It was as if, just because they'd got the label which said 'mother', everyone else got a tiny part of the label that said 'child'...

The result would have been called primitive even by people who were too primitive to have a word yet for 'primitive'.

'Oh, we're always all right. You remember that. We happen to other people.'

* The role of the lower intestine in the efforts to build a better nation is one that is often neglected by historians.

Certain things have to happen before other things. Gods play games with the fates of men. But first they have to get all the pieces on the board, and look all over the place for the dice.

The question seldom addressed is where Medusa had snakes. Underarm hair is an even more embarrassing problem when it keeps biting the top of the deodorant bottle.

Susan hated Literature. She'd much prefer to read a good book.

That question was less stupid; though you asked it in a profoundly stupid way.

He was not, by the standard definitions, a bad man; in the same way a plague-bearing rat is not, from a dispassionate point of view, a bad animal.

Imp hesitated, as people do when, after having used a language all their lives, they're told to 'say something'.

'We'll practise as we go along,' said Glod. 'Welcome to the world of professional musicianship.'

Susan looked at the mess sizzling in the huge frying-pan. It wasn't a sight to be seen on an empty stomach, although it could probably cause one.

'You're a musician, ain't you?' said Glod. 'What do you think you do?'

'I hits 'em with de hammers,' said Lias, one of nature's drummers.

It was eight in the morning, a time when drinkers are trying either to forget who they are or to remember where they live.

C. M. O. T. Dibbler liked to be up at first light, in case there was an opportunity to sell a worm to the early bird.

'We need to get it together if we're going to wow them at the Festival,' said Crash.

'What, you mean ... like ... learn to play?' said Jimbo.

'No! Music With Rocks In just happens. If you go around learning you'll never get anywhere,' said Crash.

The thought was flooding into his mind, and not for the first time, that Mr. Clete was not playing with a full orchestra, that he was one of those people who built their own hot madness out of sane and chilly parts.

Witches generally act as layers-out of the dead as well as midwives; there were plenty of people in Lancre for whom Nanny Ogg's face had been the first and last thing they'd ever seen, which had probably made the bit in the middle seem quite uneventful by comparison.

Mustrum Ridcully did a lot for rare species. For one thing, he kept them rare.

Using metaphor in front of a man as unimaginative as Ridcully was like a red flag to a bu-- was like putting something very annoying in front of someone who was annoyed by it.

People were always telling him to make something of his life, and that's what he wanted to do. He wanted to make a bed of it.

'But all them things exist,' said Nanny Ogg.

'That's no call to go around believing in them. It only encourages 'em'.

'I never said nothing,' said Nanny Ogg mildly.

'I know you never! I could hear you not saying anything! You've got the loudest silences I ever did hear from anyone who wasn't dead!'

Nanny Ogg had a pragmatic attitude to the truth; she told it if it was convenient and she couldn't be bothered to make up something more interesting.

She was an incredibly comfortable person to be around, partly because she had a mind so broad it could accommodate three football fields and a bowling alley.

The shortest unit of time in the multiverse is the New York second, defined as the period of time between the traffic lights turning green and the cab behind you honking.

Dwarfs are generally scared of heights, since they don't often have the opportunity to get used to them.

Magrat says a broomstick is one of them sexual metaphor things.*

* Although this is a phallusy.

'It's certain death anyway,' said Ridcully. 'That's the thing about Death, certainty.'

A key to the understanding of all religion is that a god's idea of amusement is Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs.

It was dawning on him that the pleasures of the flesh were pretty sparse without the flesh. Suddenly life wasn't worth living. The fact that he wasn't living it didn't cheer him up at all.

'If I'd had to buy you, you wouldn't be worth the price.'

The days followed one another patiently. Right back at the beginning of the multiverse they had tried all passing at the same time, and it hadn't worked.

Demons were like genies or philosophy professors - if you didn't word things exactly right, they delighted in giving you absolutely accurate nd completely misleading answers.

Destiny was funny stuff, he knew. You couldn't trust it. Often you couldn't even see it. Just when you knew you had it cornered, it turned out to be something else - coincidence, maybe, or providence.

This was real. This was more real even than reality. This was history. It might not be true, but that had nothing to do with it.

This is Art holding a Mirror up to Life. That's why everything is exactly the wrong way round.

Eh! sire, that is the fate of truth; she is a stern companion; she bristles all over with steel; she wounds those whom she attacks, and sometimes him who speaks her.

My friend, the pleasures to which we are not accustomed oppress us more than the griefs with which we are familiar.

ABOYNE (vb.)

To beat an expert at a game of skill by playing so appallingly that none of his clever tactics or strategies are of any use to him.

CLIXBY (adj.)

Politely rude. Briskly vague. Firmly uninformative.

All assassins had a full-length mirror in their rooms, because it would be a terrible insult to anyone to kill them when you were badly dressed.

You scrimped and saved to send them to the best schools, and then they went and paid you back by getting educated.

Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn't believing. It's where belief stops, because it isn't needed any more.

It is a hopeless endeavour to attract people to a theatre unless they can be first brought to believe that they will never get in.

'The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.'

The thing he realized about the windows was this: because they had been converted into openable windows after they had first been designed to be impregnable, they were, in fact, much less secure than if they had been designed as openable windows in the first place.

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?

One said, Got a crush on them, sort of thing?

...young men not being as a class remarkable for modesty or self-denial, especially when there is a lady in the case, when, if they colour at all, it is rather their practise to colour the story, and not themselves.

Pride is one of the seven deadly sins; but it cannot be the pride of a mother in her children, for that is a compound of two cardinal virtues-- faith and hope.

There are many pleasant fictions of the law in constant operation, but there is not one so pleasant or practically humorous as that which supposes every man to be of equal value in its impartial eye, and the benefits of all laws to be equally attainable by all men, without the smallest reference to the furniture of their pockets.

When men are about to commit, or sanction the commission of some injustice, it is not uncommon for them to express pity for the object either of that or some parallel proceeding, and to feel themselves, at the time, quite virtuous and moral, and immensely superior to those who express no pity at all. This is a kind of upholding of faith above works, and is very comfortable.

Look to yourself, and heed this warning that I give you! Your day is past, and night is coming on--

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

'Older? Older than dead?'

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?

No wonder the undead were traditionally considered to be very angry.

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.

Ridcully was simple-minded. This doesn't mean stupid. It just means that he could only think properly about things if he cut away all the complicated bits around the edges.

No naked little men sat on the summit dispensing wisdom, because the first thing the truly wise man works out is that sitting around on mountaintops gives you not only haemorrhoids but frostbitten haemorrhoids.

As yet unmeasured, but believed to be faster than light owing to its ability to move so quickly out of light's way.

He had noted that with older people. They often try to control younger, more popular and vivacious people; usually due to the fact that they are jealous of the qualities the younger people have and they lack. These inadequacies are disguised with a benign, protective attitide.

Ah wonder if anybody this side of the Atlantic has ever bought a baseball bat with playing baseball in mind.

Nanny also recalled her as being rather thoughtful and shy, as if trying to reduce the amount of world she took up.

No one had asked her, before she was born, whether she wanted a lovely personality or whether she'd prefer, say, a miserable personality but a body that could take size 9 in dresses. Instead, people would take pains to tell her that beauty was only skin-deep, as if a man ever fell for an attractive pair of kidneys.

A one-question geek test. If you get the joke, you're a geek: Seen on a California license plate on a VW Beetle: 'FEATURE'...

If ignorance is bliss, is omniscience hell?

What is good? - All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man.

What is bad? - All that proceeds from weakness.

What is happiness? - The feeling that power increases - that a resistance is overcome.

The weak and ill-constituted shall perish: first principle of our philanthropy. And one shall help them to do so.

I call an animal, a species, an individual depraved when it loses its instincts, when it chooses, when it prefers what is harmful to it.

Pity on the whole thwarts the law of evolution, which is the law of selection.

The very word 'Christianity' is a misunderstanding--at bottom there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross.

He's dead. However, credit where it's due, he hasn't let that stop him.

So what we have here is a country that tries to run itself on the commandments of a god who, the people feel, may be wearing his underpants on his head. Has he Abominated underpants?

[T]he interests of Ankh-Morpork are the interests of all money-lov--oops, sorry, all freedom-loving people everywhere

Most of the vampire families were highly nobby. You never knew who was connected to who... not just connected to who, in fact, but to whom. Whoms were likely to be far more trouble than your common everyday who.

'I've starved a few times. There's no future in it. Ate a man's leg when we were snowed up in the Ibblestarn campaign but, fair's fair, he ate mine.' He looked at their faces. 'Well, it's not on, is it, eating your own leg? You'd probably go blind.'

Lieutenant Blouse was standing in the middle of the floor in his breeches and shirtsleeves, holding a sabre. Polly was no expert in these matters, but she thought she recognised the stylish, flamboyant pose as the one beginners tend to use just before they're stabbed through the heart by a more experienced fighter.

'Good evening, gentlemen!' said the vampire. 'Please pay attention. I am a reformed vampire, which is to say, I am a bundle of suppressed instincts held together with spit and coffee. It would be wrong to say that violent, tearing carnage does not come easily to me. It's not tearing your throats out that doesn't come easily to me. Please don't make it any harder.'

To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.

For who can yet believe, though after loss,
That all these puissant legions, whose exile
Hath emptied Heaven, shall fail to re-ascend,
Self-raised, and repossess their native seat?

who overcomes
By force hath overcome but half his foe.

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.

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.

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.

'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.'

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

'I had a lot of voles last night,' said Mistress Weatherwax over her shoulder.
'Yes, but you didn't actually eat them, did you?' said Tiffany. 'It was the owl that actually ate them.'
'Technic'ly, yes,' Mistress Weatherwax admitted. 'But if you think you've been eating voles all night you'd be amazed how much you don't want to eat anything next morning. Or ever again.'

So weiss jeder aus Erfahrung, wie schnell der Traeumende einen starken an ihn dringenden Ton, zum Beispiel Glockenlaeuten, Kanonenschuesse in seinen Traum verflicht, das heisst aus ihm hinterdrein erklaert, so dass er zuerst die veranlassenden Umstaende, dann jenen Ton zu erleben meint.

Everyone knows from experience how fast the dreamer can incorporate into his dream a loud sound he hears, bell ringing, for example, or cannon fire, how he can explain it after the fact from his dream, so that he believes he is experiencing first the occasioning factors, and then that sound.

Das Traumdenken wird uns jetzt so leicht, weil wir in ungeheuren Entwickelungsstrecken der Menschheit gerade auf diese Form des phantastischen und wohlfeilen Erklaerens aus dem ersten beliebigen Einfalle heraus so gut eingedrillt worden sind. Insofern ist der Traum eine Erholung fuer das Gehirn, welches am Tage den strengeren Anforderungen an das Denken zu genuegen hat, wie sie von der hoeheren Cultur gestellt werden.

Dream-thought is so easy for us now because, during mankind's immense periods of development, we have been so well drilled in just this form of fantastic and cheap explanation from the first, best idea. In this way dreaming is recuperation for a brain which must satisfy by day the stricter demands made on thought by higher culture.

Allem Glauben zu Grunde liegt die Empfindung des Angenehmen oder Schmerzhaften in Bezug auf das empfindende Subject. Eine neue dritte Empfindung als Resultat zweier vorangegangenen einzelnen Empfindungen ist das Urtheil in seiner niedrigsten Form.

All belief is based on the feeling of pleasure or pain in relation to the feeling subject. A new, third feeling as the result of two preceeding feelings is judgement in its lowest form.

Ein wesentlicher Nachtheil, welchen das Aufhoeren metaphysischer Ansichten mit sich bringt, liegt darin, dass das Individuum zu streng seine kurze Lebenszeit in's Auge fasst und keine staerkeren Antriebe empfaengt, an dauerhaften, fuer Jahrhunderte angelegten Institutionen zu bauen

One crucial disadvantage about the end of metaphysical views is that the individual looks his own short life span too squarely in the eye and feels no strong incentive to build on enduring institutions, designed for the ages.

Man glaubt einer Philosophie etwas Gutes nachzusagen, wenn man sie als Ersatz der Religion fuer das Volk hinstellt.

One thinks he is speaking well of philosophy when he presents it as a substitute religion for the people.

Der Irrthum hat den Menschen so tief, zart, erfinderisch gemacht, eine solche Bluethe, wie Religionen und Kuenste, herauszutreiben. Das reine Erkennen waere dazu ausser Stande gewesen.

Error has made man so deep, delicate, inventive as to bring forth such blossoms as religion and arts. Pure knowledge would never have been capable of it.

Ohne die Irrthuemer, welche in den Annahmen der Moral liegen, waere der Mensch Thier geblieben. So aber hat er sich als etwas Hoeheres genommen und sich strengere Gesetze auferlegt. Er hat desshalb einen Hass gegen die der Thierheit naeher gebliebenen Stufen

Without the errors inherent in the postulates of morality, man would have remained an animal. But as it is he has taken himself to be something higher and has imposed stricter laws upon himself. He therefore has a hatred of those stages of man that remain closer to the animal state.

Die Kuerze des menschlichen Lebens verleitet zu manchen irrthuemlichen Behauptungen ueber die Eigenschaften des Menschen.

The brevity of human life misleads us to many an erroneous assertion about the qualities of man's feelings.

Die Menschen, welche jetzt grausam sind, muessen uns als Stufen frueherer Culturen gelten, welche uebrig geblieben sind: das Gebirge der Menschheit zeigt hier einmal die tieferen Formationen, welche sonst versteckt liegen, offen. ... Sie zeigen uns, was wir Alle waren, und machen uns erschrecken: aber sie selber sind so wenig verantwortlich, wie ein Stueck Granit dafuer, dass es Granit ist.

We must think of men who are cruel today as stages of earlier cultures, which have been left over ... They show us what we all were, and frighten us. But they themselves are as little responsible as a piece of granite for being granite.

Der Grund, wesshalb der Maechtige dankbar ist, ist dieser. Sein Wohlthaeter hat sich durch seine Wohlthat an der Sphaere des Maechtigen gleichsam vergriffen und sich in sie eingedraengt: nun vergreift er sich zur Vergeltung wieder an der Sphaere des Wohlthaeters durch den Act der Dankbarkeit. Es ist eine mildere Form der Rache.

The powerful man feels gratitude for the following reason: through his good deed, his benefactor has, as it were, violated the powerful man's sphere and penetrated it. Now through his act of gratitude the powerful man requites himself by violating the sphere of the benefactor. It is a milder form of revenge.

Freilich solle man Mitleiden bezeugen, aber sich hueten, es zu haben: denn die Ungluecklichen seien nun einmal so dumm, dass bei ihnen das Bezeugen von Mitleid das groesste Gut von der Welt ausmache.

Of course one ought to express pity, but one ought to guard against having it; for unfortunate people are so stupid that they count the expression of pity as the greatest good on earth.

das Mitleiden, welches Jene dann aeussern, ist insofern eine Troestung fuer die Schwachen und Leidenden, als sie daran erkennen, doch wenigstens noch Eine Macht zu haben, trotz aller ihrer Schwaeche: die Macht, wehe zu thun.

The pity that the spectators then express consoles the weak and suffering, inasmuch as they see that, despite all their weakness, they still have at least one power: the power to hurt.

Aber wird es viele Ehrliche geben, welche zugestehen, dass es Vergnuegen macht, wehe zu thun?

But will there be many people honest enough to admit that it is a pleasure to inflict pain?

Einer der gewoehnlichen Fehlschluesse ist der: weil Jemand wahr und aufrichtig gegen uns ist, so sagt er die Wahrheit.

One common false conclusion is that because someone is truthful and upright towards us he is speaking the truth.

Isn't it clear that, in all these cases [of selflessness] man is loving something of himself, a thought, a longing, an offspring, more than something else of himself, that he is thus dividing up his being and sacrificing one part for the other?

Man kann Handlungen versprechen, aber keine Empfindungen; denn diese sind unwillkuerlich. Wer jemandem verspricht, ihn immer zu lieben oder immer zu hassen oder ihm immer treu zu sein, verspricht Etwas, das nicht in seiner Macht steht

One can promise actions, but not feelings, for the latter are involuntary. He who promises to love forever or hate forever or be forever faithful to someone is promising something that is not in his power.

Passion will not wait.

[P]erhaps the great majority of men find it necessary, in order to maintain their self respect and a certain effectiveness in their actions, to lower and belittle the image they form of everyone they know.

If looks could kill, we would long ago have been done for.

Often it is success that gives to a deed the full, honest lustre of a good conscience; failure lays the shadow of an uneasy conscience upon the most estimable action.

In truth, [hope] is the most evil of evils because it prolongs man's torment.

One will seldom go wrong to attribute extreme actions to vanity, moderate ones to habit and petty ones to fear.

[I]t is automatically assumed that the perpetrator and sufferer think and feel the same, and the guilt of one is therefore measured by the pain of the other.

When virtue has slept, it will arise refreshed.

Men are not ashamed to think something dirty, but they are ashamed when they imagine that others might believe them capable of these dirty thoughts.

Most men are much too concerned with themselves to be malicious.

We praise or find fault, depending on which of the two provides more opportunity for our powers of judgement to shine.

He who humbleth himself wants to be exalted.

[T]he initial character of justice is barter.

Unusquisque tantum juris habet, quantum potentia valere creditur

Each has as much right as his power is assessed to be.

[W]e all still suffer from too slight a regard for our own personal needs; it has been poorly developed.

Socrates and Plato were right: whatever man does, he always acts for the good; that is, in a way which seems to him good (useful) according to the degree of his intellect, the prevailing measure of his rationality.

Is Schadenfreude devilish ... Is the knowledge, then, that another person is suffering because of us supposed to make immoral the same thing about which we would otherwise feel no responsibility?

If one does not know how painful an action is, it cannot be malicious; thus the child is not malicious or evil to an animal: he examines and destroys it like a toy.

No life without pleasure, the struggle for pleasure is the struggle for life.

Between good and evil actions there is no difference in type; at most a difference in degree. Good actions are sublimated evil actions; evil actions are good actions become coarse and stupid.

The thinking of men who believe in magic and miracles is bent on imposing a law on nature; and in short, religious worship is the result of this thinking.

When we hear the old bells ringing out on a Sunday morning, we ask ourselves: can it be possible? This is for a Jew, crucified two thousand years ago, who said he was the son of God. The proof for such a claim is wanting.

Christianity came into being in order to lighten the heart; but now it has to burden the heart first, in order to be able to lighten it afterwards. Consequently it will perish.

Without blind disciples, no man or his work has ever gained great influence.

There is not enough love and kindness in the world to permit us to give any of it away to imaginary beings.

In each ascetic morality, man prays to one part of himself as a god and also finds it necessary to diabolify the rest.

What do we long for when we see beauty? To be beautiful. We think much happiness must be connected with it. But that is an error.

Art renders the sight of life bearable by laying over it the gauze of impure thinking.

Every great phenomenon is followed by degeneration, particularly in the realm of art. The model of the great man stimulates vainer natures to imitate him outwardly or to surpass him; in addition, all great talents have the fateful quantity of stifling many weaker forces and seeds, and seem to devastate the nature around them. The most fortunate instance in the development of an art is when several geniuses reciprocally keep each other in check; in this kind of a struggle, weaker and gentler natures are generally also allowed air and light.

Just as youth and childhood have value in and of themselves ... so too do unfinished thoughts have their own value.

Every writer is surprised anew when a book, as soon as it has been separated from him, begins to take on a life of its own ... it goes about finding its readers, kindles life, pleases, horrifies, fathers new works, becomes the soul of others' resolutions and behaviour. In short, it lives like a being fitted out with a mind and soul--yet it is nevertheless not human.

[O]fficial thieves were rare in the Ramtops, where people weren't rich enough to afford them.

The Creator had a lot of remarkably good ideas when he put the world together, but making it understandable hadn't been one of them.

It was crowded in the Curry Gardens on the corner of God Street and Blood Alley, but only with the cream of society - at least, with those people who are found floating on the top and who, therefore, it's wisest to call the cream.

They walked out through the wall. He was halfway after them before he realised that walking through walls was impossible.

The suicidal logic of this nearly killed him. He felt the chill of the stone around his limbs before a voice in his ear said:

LOOK AT IT THIS WAY. THE WALL CANT BE THERE. OTHERWISE YOU WOULDN'T BE WALKING THROUGH IT. WOULD YOU, BOY?

There was a certain something about the air in the city. You got the feeling that it was air that had seen life. You couldn't help noting with every breath that thousands of other people were very close to you and nearly all of them had armpits.

There had been a sound like someone making no noise at all. Forget peas and mattresses - sheer natural selection had established over the years that the royal families that survived longest were those whose members could distinguish an assassin in the dark by the noise he was clever enough not to make, because, in court circles, there was always someone ready to cut the heir with a knife.

Ysabell sighed. 'Look, how about this? Let's pretend we've had the row and I've won. See? It saves a lot of effort.'

Only one creature could have duplicated the expressions on their faces, and that would be a pigeon who has heard not only that Lord Nelson has got down off his column but has also been seen buying a 12-bore repeater and a box of cartridges.

There should be a word for that brief period just after waking when the mind is full of warm pink nothing. You lie there entirely empty of thought, except for a growing suspicion that heading towards you, like a sockful of damp sand in a nocturnal alleyway, are all the recollections you'd really rather do without, and which amount to the fact that the only mitigating factor in your horrible future is the certainty that it will be quite short.

But at least the way was clear now. When you step off a cliff, your life takes a very definite direction.

Then there's all that business with goat-headed gods. Most witches don't believe in gods. They know that the gods exist, of course. They even deal with them occasionally. But they don't believe in them. They know them too well. It would be like believing in the postman.

The Oggs contained, in just one family, enough feuds to keep an entire Ozark of normal hillbillies going for a century.

And sometimes this encouraged a foolish outsider to join in and perhaps make an uncomplimentary remark about one Ogg to another Ogg. Whereupon every single Ogg would turn on him, every part of the family closing up together like the parts of a well-oiled, blue-steeled engine to deal instant merciless destruction to the interloper.

They were the kind of mountains where winters went for their summer holidays.

Most people, on waking up, accelerate through a quick panicky pre-consciousness check-up: who am I, where am I, who is he/she, good god, why am I cuddling a policeman's helmet, what happened last night?

It was like getting muddy. Getting muddy when you had a nice hot tub to look forward to was fun; getting muddy when all you had to look forward to was more mud was no fun at all.

It is a universal fact that any innocent comment made by any recently-married young member of any workforce is an instant trigger for coarse merriment among his or her older and more cynical colleagues. This happens even if everyone concerned has nine legs and lives at the bottom of an ocean of ammonia on a huge cold planet.

The wages of sin is death but so is the salary of virtue, and at least the evil get to go home early on Fridays.

Cats are like witches. They don't fight to kill, but to win. There is a difference. There's no point in killing an opponent. That way, they won't know they've lost, and to be a real winner you have to have an opponent who is beaten and knows it. There's no triumph over a corpse, but a beaten opponent, who will remain beaten every day of the remainder of their sad and wretched life, is something to treasure.

The fact is, that there was considerable difficulty in inducing Oliver to take upon himself the office of respiration,--a troublesome practice, but one which custom has rendered necessary to our easy existence

Now, if, during this brief period, Oliver had been surrounded by careful grandmothers, anxious aunts, experienced nurses, and doctors of profound wisdom, he would most inevitably and indubitably have been killed in no time.

What an excellent example of the power of dress, young Oliver Twist was! Wrapped in the blanket which had hitherto formed his only covering, he might have been the child of a nobleman or a beggar; it would have been hard for the haughtiest stranger to have assigned him his proper station in society. But now that he was enveloped in the old calico robes which had grown yellow in the same service, he was badged and ticketed, and fell into his place at once--a parish child--the orphan of a workhouse--the humble, half-starved drudge--to be cuffed and buffeted through the world--despised by all, and pitied by none.

Oliver cried lustily. If he could have known that he was an orphan, left to the tender mercies of church-wardens and overseers, perhaps he would have cried the louder.

The elderly female was a woman of wisdom and experience; she knew what was good for children; and she had a very accurate perception of what was good for herself. So, she appropriated the greater part of the weekly stipend to her own use, and consigned the rising parochial generation to even a shorter allowance than was originally provided for them. Thereby finding in the lowest depth a deeper still; and proving herself a very great experimental philosopher.

What a novel illustration of the tender laws of England! They let the paupers go to sleep!

If a dread of not being understood be hidden in the breasts of other young people to anything like the extent to which it used to be hidden in mine,--which I consider probable, as I have no particular reason to suspect myself of having been a monstrosity,-- it is the key to many reservations.

Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.

Herbert Pocket had a frank and easy way with him that was very taking. I had never seen any one then, and I have never seen any one since, who more strongly expressed to me, in every look and tone, a natural incapacity to do anything secret and mean. There was something wonderfully hopeful about his general air, and something that at the same time whispered to me he would never be very successful or rich.

So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise.