Best 199 quotes in «discworld quotes» category

Then it came to her. She did not deserve to die. And she was not alone. She never would be. Not while her land was beneath her boots. Her land. The land of the Achings. She was Tiffany Aching. Not Granny Weatherwax, but a witch in her own right. A witch who knew exactly who she was and how she wanted to do things. Her way. And she had not failed, because she had barely begun...

Then there is the dress. It has been owned by many sisters as well and has been taken up, taken out, taken down, and taken in by her mother so many times that it really ought to have been taken away.

Then she wondered, not for the first time, about the differences between wizards and witches. The main difference, she thought, was that wizards used books and staffs to create spells, big spells about big stuff, and they were men. While witches - always women - dealt with everyday stuff. Big stuff too, she reminded herself firmly. What could be bigger than births and deaths? but why shouldn't this boy want to be a witch? She had chosen to be a witch, so why couldn't he make the same choice? With a start, she realized it was her choice that counted here too. If she was going to be a sort of head witch, she should be able to decide this. She didn't have to ask any other witches. It could be her decision. Her responsibility. Perhaps a first step toward doing things differently?

Then Tak looked upon the stone and it was trying to come alive, and Tak smiled, and wrote All things strive. And for the service the stone had given, he fashioned it into the first Troll, and delighted in the life that came unbidden.

There are eight levels of wizardry on the Disc; after sixteen years Rincewind has failed to achieve even level one. In fact it is considered opinion of some of his tutors that he is incapable even of achieving level zero, which most normal people are born at; to put it another way, it has been suggested that when Rincewind dies the average occult ability of the human race will actually go up by a fraction.

The plain old Sam Vimes had fought back. He got rid of most of the plumes and the stupid tights, and ended up with a dress uniform that at least looked as though its owner was male. But the helmet had gold decoration, and the bespoke armourers had made a new, gleaming breastplate with useless gold ornamentation on it. Sam Vimes felt like a class traitor every time he wore it. He hated being thought of as one of those people that wore stupid ornamental armour. It was gilt by association.

There are no maps. You can't map a sense of humor.

There are things so horrible that even the dark is afraid of them. Most people don't know this and this is just as well because the world could not really operate if everyone stayed in bed with the blankets over their head, which is what would happen if people knew what horrors lay a shadow's width away.

There was a hell for blasphemers. There was a hell for disputers of rightful authority. There were a number of hells for liars. There was probably a hell for little boys who wished their grandmothers were dead. There were more than enough hells to go around.

There had been a time when the continents were different, Rincewind understood, and then they'd sort of shuffled more comfortably together like puppies on a basket.

There was a steady drizzle when they left for the tower. Moist drove the cart, with the others sitting on the load behind him and bickering over trigonometry. Moist tried not to listen; he got lost when maths started to get silly.

There was a sigh from Death. Space he thought. That was the trouble. It was never like this on worlds with everlastingly cloudy skies. But once humans saw all that space, their brains expanded to try and fill it up.

There were lessons later on. These were going a lot better now she’d got rid of the reading books about bouncy balls and dogs called Spot. She’d got Gawain on to the military campaigns of General Tacticus, which were suitably bloodthirsty but, more importantly, considered too difficult for a child. As a result his vocabulary was doubling every week and he could already use words like ‘disembowelled’ in everyday conversation. After all, what was the point of teaching children to be children? They were naturally good at it.

There was something pleasant about an empty classroom. Of course, as any teacher would point out, one nice thing was that there were no children in it.

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

The street was full of animals, milling around uncertainly. When animals are in a state of uncertainty they get nervous, and the street was already, as it were, paved with anxiety.

The three thieves looked around. As their eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, they received a general impression of armourality, with strong overtones of helmetness.

The truth of the matter was that Juliet would look good in a sack. Somehow everything she wore fitted perfectly. Glenda, on the other hand, never found anything good in her size and indeed seldom anything in her size. In theory, something should fit, but all she ever found was facts, which are so unbecoming.

Tiffany found her mind filling up with an invisible gray mist, and in that thought there was nothing but grief. She could feel herself trying to push back time, but even the best witchcraft could not do that.

They were scrawny, even by Feegle standards, with barely a wisp of beard hair between them and impractically low-slung spogs knocking about their knees, their kilts hung low on their skinny hips. To Tiffany's amazement, she could see the top bands of colored pants riding high above them. pants? On a Feegle? The times were indeed changing. "Pull yon kilts up, lads!" Ron muttered as they pushed their way past.

Tiffany had watched the dead before many times, of course - it was the custom for a departing soul to have company the night before any funeral or burial, as if to make a point to anything that might be... lurking: this person mattered, there is someone here to make sure nothing evil creeps in at this time of danger.

The world rides through space on the back of a turtle. This is one of the great ancient world myths, found wherever men and turtles were gathered together; the four elephants were an Indo-European sophistication. The idea has been lying in the lumber rooms of legend for centuries. All I had to do was grab it and run away before the alarms went off. There are no maps. You can't map a sense of humour. Anyway, what is a fantasy map but a space beyond which There Be Dragons? On the Discworld we know There Be Dragons Everywhere. They might not all have scales and forked tongues, but they Be Here all right, grinning and jostling and trying to sell you souvenirs.

Tiffany thought of the little spot in the woods where Granny Weatherwax lay. Remembered. And knew that You had been right. Granny Weatherwax was indeed here. And there. She was, in fact, and always would be, everywhere.

Tun? Wir sind das wichtigste magische Bildungsinstitut!", betonte Ridcully. "Aber lehren wir?" "Nur wenn uns nichts anderes übrig bleibt", sagte der Dekan. "Wir zeigen den Studenten, wo die Bibliothek ist, plaudern ein wenig mit ihnen und promovieren die Überlebenden. Wenn sie auf Probleme stoßen, steht meine Tür in metaphorischer Hinsicht immer für sie offen." "In metaphorischer Hinsicht?", wiederholte Ponder. "Ja. In Wirklichkeit ist sie natürlich verschlossen." "Erklär ihm, dass wir nichts tun, Stibbons", verlangte der Dozent für neue Runen. "Wir sind Akademiker.

Twas beauty killed the beast,‘ said the Dean, who liked to say things like that. ‘No it wasn‘t,‘ said the Chair. ‘It was it splatting into the ground like that.

Two uniformed trolls were standing in front of Sergeant Colon's high desk, with a slightly smaller troll between them. This troll was wearing a slightly downcast expression. It was also wearing a tutu and had a small pair of gauzed wings glued to its back. " - happen to know that trolls don't have any tradition of a Tooth Fairy," Colon was saying. "Especially not one called' - he looked down - "Clinkerbell. So how about we just call it breaking and entering without a Thieves' Guild license?" "Is racial prejudice, not letting trolls have a Tooth Fairy," Clinkerbell muttered. One of the troll guards upended a sack on the desk. Various items of silverwear cascaded over the paperwork. "And this is what you found under their pillows, was it?" said Colon. "Bless dere little hearts," said Clinkerbell.

Vimes was already lost. Oh, there was the sun, but that was just a direction. He could feel it on the side of his face. And the camel rocked from side to side. There was no real way of judging distance, except by haemorrhoids.

Vimes shook some lather off the blade. "Hah! I bet they have. Tell me, Willikins, did you fight much when you were a kid? Were you in a gang or anything?" "I was privileged to belong to the Shamlegger Street Rude Boys, sir," said the butler. "Really?" said Vimes, genuinely impressed. "They were pretty tough nuts, as I recall." "Thank you, sir," said Willikins smoothly. "I pride myself I used to give somewhat more than I got if we needed to discuss the vexed area of turf issues with the young men from Rope Street. Stevedore's hooks were their weapon of choice, as I recall." "And yours...?" said Vimes, agog. "A cap-brim sewn with sharpened pennies, sir. An ever-present help in times of trouble." "Ye gods, man! You could put someone's eye out with something like that." "With care, sir, yes," said Willikins, meticulously folding a towel.

Vimes woke in damp and utter darkness with sand under his cheek. Some parts of his body reported for duty, others protested that they had a note from their mother.

Vimes awoke with a noseful of camel. There are far worse awakenings, but not as many as you might think.

We did Rat Surprise last night for the Sons of Bloodaxe annual dinner," he said. There was a general groan. "And it was rat." He raised his voice against the complaining. "You can't use anything else - listen - you've got to have the noses poking through the pastry, all right? Some of the best rat we've had in a long time!

"We try to make guests feel welcome," said Dee, scuttling behind his desk. He pulled off his pointed hat and, to Vimes's amazement, put on a pair of thick smoked glasses. "You had papers?" he said. Vimes handed them over. "It says here "His Grace", the dwarf said, after reading them for awhile. "Yes, that's me." "And there's a sir." "That's me, too." "And an excellency." "'fraid so." Vimes narrowed his eyes. "I was blackboard monitor for awhile, too.

Welcome to fear, Moist said to himself. It's hope, turned inside out.

We need to borrow your boat," said Vimes. "Bugger off!" "I'm choosing to believe that was a salty nautical expression meaning 'Why, certainly,'" said Vimes.

We're really good at it, Teppic thought. Mere animals couldn't possibly manage to act like this. You need to be a human being to be really stupid.

When they arrived they would briefly and passionately mate, for the first and only time, and from that fiery union new turtles would be born to carry a new pattern of worlds. This was known as the Big Bang hypothesis.

What a place! What a situation! What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter.

When he was a boy he'd read books about great military campaigns, and visited the museums and looked with patriotic pride at the paintings of famous cavalry charges, last stands and glorious victories. It had come as rather a shock, when he later began to participate in some of these, to find that the painters had unaccountably left out the intestines. Perhaps they just weren't very good at them.

When new students tried an experiment that was particularly successful in terms of explosive force, the result was often a cross between a major factory refit and a game of Hunt-the-other-Kidney.

When they arrived they would briefly and passionately mate, for the first and only time, and from that fiery union new turtle would be born to carry a new pattern of worlds. This was known as the Big Bang hypothesis.

What we're going to do is keep the peace. That's our job. We're not going to be heroes, we're just going to be ... normal.

where actual evidence had been a bit sparse he had, in the best traditions of the keen ethnic historian, inferred from revealed self-evident wisdom* *Made it up and extrapolated from associated sources** **had read a lot of stuff that other people had made up, too.

Wolves hate werewolves.' 'What? That can't be right! When she's wolf-shaped she's just like a wolf!' 'So? When she's human-shaped she's just like a human. And what's that got to do with anything? Humans don't like werewolves. Wolves don't like werewolves. People don't like wolves that can think like people, an' people don't like people who can act like wolves. Which just goes to show that people are the same everywhere.' said Gaspode. He assessed this sentence and added, 'Even when they're wolves.

Winder's mind felt even fuzzier than it had done over the past few years, but he was certain about cake. He'd been eating cake, and now there wasn't any. Through the mists he saw it, apparently close but, when he tried to reach it, a long way away. A certain realization dawned on him. "Oh," he said. YES, said Death. "Not even time to finish my cake?" NO. THERE IS NO MORE TIME, EVEN FOR CAKE. FOR YOU, THE CAKE IS OVER. YOU HAVE REACHED THE END OF CAKE.

You haven't heard of him? And he is a D'reg!" Mrs Goriff pulled at her husband's arm. "D'reg?" said Angua. "A warlike desert tribe," said Carrot. "Very fierce. Honourable, though. They say that if a D'reg is your friend he's your friend for life." "And if he's not your friend?" "That's about five seconds.

Ye mustn't be afraid to ask for help. Pride is a good thing, my girl, but it will kill you in time.

You couldn't be a real copper in Ankh-Morpork and stay sane. You had to care. Anda caring in Ankh-Morpork was like opening a tin of meat in the middle of a piranha school.

"And what would humans be without love?" Rare, said Death.

You know zat another term for an iconographer would be ‘photographer’? From the old word ‘photus’ in Latation, vhich means—” “‘To prance around like an idiot ordering everyone about as if you owned the place,’” said William. “Ah, you know it!

Young Sam at this point had tired of petticoat company and had drifted over to an elderly goblin man who was working on a pot, and was watching with extreme fascination to the apparent pleasure, as far as Vimes could tell, of the elderly goblin. That's a lesson to us...I don't know what kind of lesson, but it's a lesson, he thought.