Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett
It wasn’t that they didn’t take an interest in the world around them. On the contrary, they had a deep, personal and passionate involvement in it, but instead of asking, ‘Why are we here?’ they asked, ‘Is it going to rain before the harvest?’
A philosopher might have deplored this lack of mental ambition, but only if he was really certain about where his next meal was coming from. (CJ)
The wording began:
‘You are cordially invited…’
…and was in that posh runny writing that was hard to read but ever so official.
Nanny Ogg grinned and tucked the card back on the mantelpiece. She liked the idea of ‘cordially’. It had a rich, a thick and above all an alcoholic sound. (CJ)
When people were in serious trouble they went to a witch.*
*Sometimes, of course, to say, ‘Please stop doing it.’ (CJ)
Lancrastians liked clocks, although they didn't bother much about actual time in any length much shorter than an hour. If you needed to boil an egg, you sang fifteen verse of 'Where Had All The Custard Gone?' under your breath. But the tick was a comfort on long evenings. (CJ)
…like many old ladies, Nanny Ogg was a bottomless pit for free food. (CJ)
Lancre people looked after the calories and let the vitamins go hang.
'Do you think I could get a salad?' she ventured.
'Hope not,' said Nanny happily. (CJ)
Through a cloud of sweet-smelling smoke Nanny reflected that Agnes read books. All the witches who’d lived in her cottage were bookish types. They thought you could see life through books but you couldn’t, the reason being that the words got in the way. (CJ)
'I can't start repenting at my time of life. I'd never get any work done. Anyway,' she added, 'I ain't sorry for most of it.' (CJ)
'I'm going to have a word with young Verence,' said Nanny.
'He is the king, Nanny,' said Agnes.
'That's no reason for him to go around acting like he was royalty.' (CJ)
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. Some had antique value. A bloody good grudge, Lancre reckoned, was like a fine old wine. You looked after it carefully and left it to your children. (CJ)
…one of the things a witch did was stand right on the edge, where the decisions had to be made. You made them so that others didn’t have to, so that others could even pretend to themselves that there were no decisions to be made, no little secrets, that things just happened. (CJ)
'Well, if it was a choice of wishing a child health, wealth and happiness, or Granny Weatherwax on her side, I know which I'd choose,' said Magrat. (CJ)
Lancrastrians never threw away anything that worked. The trouble was, they seldom changed anything that worked, either. (CJ)
The people of Lancre wouldn’t dream of living in anything other than a monarchy. They’d done so for thousands of years and knew that it worked. But they’d also found that it didn’t do to pay too much attention to what the King wanted, because there was bound to be another king along in forty years or so and he’d be certain to want something different and so they’d have gone to all that trouble for nothing. In the meantime, his job as they saw it was to mostly stay in the palace, practice the waving, have enough sense to face the right way on coins and let them get on with the ploughing, sowing, growing and harvesting. It was, as they saw it, a social contract. They did what they always did, and he let them. (CJ)
'... it's one thing saying you've got the best god, but sayin' it's the only real one is a bit of cheek, in my opinion.' (CJ)
Lancre people considered that anything religious that wasn’t said in some ancient and incomprehensible speech probably wasn’t the genuine article. (CJ)
'... as witches we believe in religious tolerance...'
'That's right,' said Nanny Ogg. 'But only for the right religions ....' (CJ)
... Nanny Ogg's was an expression of extreme interest that was nevertheless made up of one hundred percent artificial additives. (CJ)
The smug mask of virtue triumphant could be almost as horrible as the face of wickedness revealed. (CJ)
You had to choose. You might be right, you might be wrong but you had to choose. Knowing that the rightness or wrongness might never be clear or even that you were deciding between two sorts of wrong, that there was no right anywhere. And always, always you did it by yourself. You were the one there, on the edge, watching and listening. (CJ)
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. (CJ)
She’d always tried to face towards the light. But the harder you stared into the brightness the harsher it burned into you until at last, the temptation picked you up and bid you turn around to see how long, rich, strong and dark, streaming away behind you your shadow had become- (CJ)
Attractive men were not in plentiful supply in Lancre, where licking your hand and smoothing your hair down before taking a girl out was considered swanky. (CJ)
The only sensible way to hold a conversation with Igor was when you had an umbrella. (CJ)
Not many people ever tasted Nanny Ogg’s home-made brandy; it was technically impossible. Once it encountered the warmth of the human mouth it immediately turned into fumes. You drank it via your sinuses. (CJ)
‘I feel a bit…odd,’ said Agnes.
‘Ah, could be the drink,’ said Nanny.
‘I haven’t had any!’
‘No? Well, there’s the problem right there.’ (CJ)
‘How does Perdita work, then?’ she said.
‘Look, you know the part of you that wants to do all the things you don’t dare do, and thinks the thoughts you don’t dare think?’
Nanny’s face stayed blank. ‘Like ... maybe ... rip off all your clothes and run naked in the rain?’ she hazarded.
‘Oh, yes. Right,’ said Nanny.
‘Well ... I suppose Perdita is that part of me.’
‘Really? I’ve always been that part of me,’ said Nanny. ‘The important thing is to remember where you left your clothes.’ (CJ)
People often got the wrong idea about Nanny Ogg, and she took care to see that they did. (CJ)
Nanny could find an innuendo in ‘Good morning.’ She could certainly find one in ‘innuendo.’ (CJ)
‘But that’s just a bit of superstition, isn’t it? Witches don’t have to come in threes.’
‘Oh, no. Course not,’ said Nanny. ‘You can have any number up to about, oh, four or five.’
‘What happens if there’s more, then? Something awful?’
‘Bloody great row, usually,’ said Nanny. (CJ)
…books that were all about the world tended to be written by people who knew all about books rather than all about the world. (CJ)
‘Just as Om reached out his hand to save the prophet Brutha from the torture, so will he spread his wings over me in my time of trial,’ said Oats, but he sounded as though he was trying to reassure himself rather than Nanny. He went on: ‘I’ve got a pamphlet if you would like to know more,’ and this time the tone was much more positive, as if the existence of Om was a little uncertain whereas the existence of pamphlets was obvious to any open-minded rational-thinking person. (CJ)
‘Vampires are very anal-retentive, you see?’
‘I shouldn’t like meeting one that was the opposite,’ said Nanny. (CJ)
Mrs Scorbic was permanently angry, in the same way mountains are permanently large. (CJ)
... there was probably no combination of vowels that could do justice to the cry Nanny Ogg made on seeing a young baby. It included sounds known only to cats. (CJ)
'Nothing like being stared at by a teddybear to put a young man off his stroke,' said Nanny Ogg. (CJ)
‘You mean just because she’s a woman she should use sexual wiles on him?’ said Magrat. ‘This is so ... so ... well, it’s so Nanny Ogg, that’s all I can say.’
‘She should use any wile she can lay her hands on,’ said Nanny. (CJ)
‘… if I knew I’d got a heel that would kill me if someone stuck a spear in it, I’d go into battle wearing very heavy boots-’ (CJ)
'I understood every word in that sentence, but not the sentence itself.' (CJ)
He didn't gird his loins, because he wasn't certain how you did that and had never dared ask ... (CJ)
… the seeker after truth had found truths instead. The Third Journey of the Prophet Cena, for example, seemed remarkably like a retranslation of the Testament of Sand in the Laotan Book of the Whole. On one shelf alone he found forty-three remarkably similar accounts of a great flood, and in every single one of them a man very much like Bishop Horn had saved the elect of mankind by building a magical boat. Details varied of course. Sometimes the boat was made of wood, sometimes of banana leaves. Sometimes the news of the emerging dry land was brought by a swan, sometimes by an iguana. Of course these stories in the chronicles of other religions were mere folktales and myth, while the voyage detailed in the Book of Cena was holy truth. But nevertheless... (CJ)
Hodgesaargh didn’t much mind who ran the castle. For hundreds of years the falconers had simply got on with the important things, like falconry, which needed a lot of training, and left the kinging to amateurs. (CJ)
Everything was a test. Everything was a competition. Life put them in front of you every day. You watched yourself all the time. You had to make choices. You never got told which ones were right. Oh, some of the priests said you got given marks afterwards but what was the point of that? (CJ)
‘Am I dyin’?’
YES.
‘Will I die?’
YES.
Granny Weatherwax thought this over. ‘But from your point of view, everyone is dying and everyone will die, right?’
YES.
‘So you aren’t actually bein’ a lot of help, strictly speakin’.’ (CJ)
CHOOSE, he said. YOU ARE GOOD AT CHOOSING, I BELIEVE.
‘Is there any advice you could be givin’ me?’ said Granny.
CHOOSE RIGHT. (CJ)
Agnes loathed him. Perdita merely hated him, which is the opposite pole to love and just as attractive. (CJ)
One or two of the old barrows had been exposed over the years, their huge stones attracting their own folklore. If you left your unshod horse at one of them overnight and placed sixpence on the stone, in the morning the sixpence would be gone and you’d never see your horse again, either... (CJ)
Fewer birds could sit more meekly than the Lancre wowhawk, or lappet-faced worrier, a carnivore permanently on the lookout for the vegetarian option. It spent most of its time asleep in any case, but when forced to find food it tended to sit on a branch out of the wind somewhere and wait for something to die. When in the mews the worriers would initially perch like other birds and then, talons clamped to the pole, doze off peacefully upside down. Hodgesaargh bred them because they were found only in Lancre and he liked the plumage, but all reputable falconers agreed that for hunting purposes the only way you could reliably bring down prey with a wowhawk was by using it in a slingshot. (CJ)
‘You wouldn’t let a poor old lady go off and confront monsters on a wild night like this, would you?’
They watched him owlishly for a while just in case something interestingly nasty was going to happen to him.
The someone near the back said, ‘So why should we care what happens to monsters?’
And Shawn Ogg said, ‘That’s Granny Weatherwax, that is.’
‘But she’s an old lady!’ Oats insisted.
The crowd took a few steps back. Oats was clearly a dangerous man to be around.
‘Would you go out alone on a night like this?’ he said.
The voice at the back said, ‘Depends if I knew where Granny Weatherwax was.’ (CJ)
‘No one can be quiet like Esme. You can hardly hear yourself think for the silence.’ (CJ)
'People like to see a bit of bellowing in a king. The odd belch is always popular too. Even a bit of carousing'd help if he could manage it. You know, quaffing and such.' (CJ)
'People need something today but they generally need something else tomorrow.' (CJ)
Verence was technically an absolute ruler and would continue to be so provided he didn’t make the mistake of repeatedly asking Lancrestrians to do anything they didn’t want to do. (CJ)
‘Once people find out you’re a vampire they act as if you’re some kind of monster.’ (CJ)
‘Bein’ human means judgin’ all the time,’ said the voice behind him. ‘This and that, good and bad, making choices every day… that’s human.’
‘And are you sure you make the right decisions?’
‘No. But I do the best I can.’
‘And hope for mercy, eh?’
A bony finger prodded him in the back.
‘Mercy’s a fine thing, but judgin’ comes first. Otherwise you don’t know what you’re bein’ merciful about.’ (CJ)
‘There’s no greys, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.’
‘It’s a lot more complicated than that -’
‘No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.’ (CJ)
‘But you read a lot of books, I’m thinking. Hard to have faith, ain’t it, when you’ve read too many books?’ (CJ)
‘Many people find faith a great solace,’ he said. He wished he was one of them.
‘Good.’
‘Really? Somehow I thought you’d argue.’
‘It’s not my place to tell ‘em what to believe, if they act decent.’
‘But it’s not something that you feel drawn to, perhaps, in the darker hours?’
‘No. I’ve already got a hot water bottle.’ (CJ)
Nanny Ogg had always considered herself unshockable, but there's no such thing. Shocks can come from unexpected directions. (CJ)
People were good at imagining hells, and some they occupied while they were alive. (CJ)
‘There have to be rules, Mistress Weatherwax.’
‘And what’s the first one that your Om requires, then?’
‘That believers should worship no other god but Om,’ said Oats promptly.
‘Oh yes? That’s gods for you. Very self-centred, as a rule.’ (CJ)
'... but that's what true faith would mean, y'see? Sacrificin' your own life, one day at a time, to the flame, declarin' the truth of it, workin' for it, breathin' the soul of it. That's religion. Anything else is just ... is just bein' nice. And a way of keepin' in touch with the neighbours.' (CJ)
He was trying to find some help in the ancient military journals of General Tacticus, whose intelligent campaigning had been so successful that he’d lent his very name to the detailed prosecution of martial endeavour, and had actually found a section headed What to Do If One Army Occupies a Well-fortified and Superior Ground and the Other Does Not, but since the first sentence read ‘Endeavour to be the one inside’ he’d rather lost heart. (CJ)
The role of the lower intestine in the efforts to build a better nation is one that is often neglected by historians. (CJ)
And to think I thought it was an allegorical creature,’ said the priest.
‘Well? Even allegories have to live,’ said Granny Weatherwax. (CJ)
There’s no point in having underlings if you don’t let them be the first to go through suspicious doors. (CJ)
‘Remember - that which does not kill us can only make us stronger.’
‘And that which does kill us leaves us dead!’ (CJ)
Mobs become uncertain very quickly, in view of the absence of a central brain ... (CJ)
‘Oh, don’t blame yourself, Mrs. Ogg. I’m sure others will do that for you-’ (CJ)
'Time goes so quickly when you're dead.' (CJ)
'Don't trust the cannibal just 'cos he's usin' a knife and fork.' (CJ)
'But now, apparently, we're in modern times.'
'That's what they say,' murmured Granny.
'Well, madam, I've never taken too much notice of them. Fifty years later they never seem so modern at all.' (CJ)
... evil might come animal sharp in the night or greyly by day on a list ... (CJ)
Granny Weatherwax had a primal snore. It had never been tamed. No one had ever had to sleep next to it, to curb its wilder excesses by means of a kick, a prod in the small of the back or a pillow used as a bludgeon. (CJ)
'Don't do anything I wouldn't do, if you ever find anything I wouldn't do.' (CJ)
A philosopher might have deplored this lack of mental ambition, but only if he was really certain about where his next meal was coming from. (CJ)
The wording began:
‘You are cordially invited…’
…and was in that posh runny writing that was hard to read but ever so official.
Nanny Ogg grinned and tucked the card back on the mantelpiece. She liked the idea of ‘cordially’. It had a rich, a thick and above all an alcoholic sound. (CJ)
When people were in serious trouble they went to a witch.*
*Sometimes, of course, to say, ‘Please stop doing it.’ (CJ)
Lancrastians liked clocks, although they didn't bother much about actual time in any length much shorter than an hour. If you needed to boil an egg, you sang fifteen verse of 'Where Had All The Custard Gone?' under your breath. But the tick was a comfort on long evenings. (CJ)
…like many old ladies, Nanny Ogg was a bottomless pit for free food. (CJ)
Lancre people looked after the calories and let the vitamins go hang.
'Do you think I could get a salad?' she ventured.
'Hope not,' said Nanny happily. (CJ)
Through a cloud of sweet-smelling smoke Nanny reflected that Agnes read books. All the witches who’d lived in her cottage were bookish types. They thought you could see life through books but you couldn’t, the reason being that the words got in the way. (CJ)
'I can't start repenting at my time of life. I'd never get any work done. Anyway,' she added, 'I ain't sorry for most of it.' (CJ)
'I'm going to have a word with young Verence,' said Nanny.
'He is the king, Nanny,' said Agnes.
'That's no reason for him to go around acting like he was royalty.' (CJ)
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. Some had antique value. A bloody good grudge, Lancre reckoned, was like a fine old wine. You looked after it carefully and left it to your children. (CJ)
…one of the things a witch did was stand right on the edge, where the decisions had to be made. You made them so that others didn’t have to, so that others could even pretend to themselves that there were no decisions to be made, no little secrets, that things just happened. (CJ)
'Well, if it was a choice of wishing a child health, wealth and happiness, or Granny Weatherwax on her side, I know which I'd choose,' said Magrat. (CJ)
Lancrastrians never threw away anything that worked. The trouble was, they seldom changed anything that worked, either. (CJ)
The people of Lancre wouldn’t dream of living in anything other than a monarchy. They’d done so for thousands of years and knew that it worked. But they’d also found that it didn’t do to pay too much attention to what the King wanted, because there was bound to be another king along in forty years or so and he’d be certain to want something different and so they’d have gone to all that trouble for nothing. In the meantime, his job as they saw it was to mostly stay in the palace, practice the waving, have enough sense to face the right way on coins and let them get on with the ploughing, sowing, growing and harvesting. It was, as they saw it, a social contract. They did what they always did, and he let them. (CJ)
'... it's one thing saying you've got the best god, but sayin' it's the only real one is a bit of cheek, in my opinion.' (CJ)
Lancre people considered that anything religious that wasn’t said in some ancient and incomprehensible speech probably wasn’t the genuine article. (CJ)
'... as witches we believe in religious tolerance...'
'That's right,' said Nanny Ogg. 'But only for the right religions ....' (CJ)
... Nanny Ogg's was an expression of extreme interest that was nevertheless made up of one hundred percent artificial additives. (CJ)
The smug mask of virtue triumphant could be almost as horrible as the face of wickedness revealed. (CJ)
You had to choose. You might be right, you might be wrong but you had to choose. Knowing that the rightness or wrongness might never be clear or even that you were deciding between two sorts of wrong, that there was no right anywhere. And always, always you did it by yourself. You were the one there, on the edge, watching and listening. (CJ)
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. (CJ)
She’d always tried to face towards the light. But the harder you stared into the brightness the harsher it burned into you until at last, the temptation picked you up and bid you turn around to see how long, rich, strong and dark, streaming away behind you your shadow had become- (CJ)
Attractive men were not in plentiful supply in Lancre, where licking your hand and smoothing your hair down before taking a girl out was considered swanky. (CJ)
The only sensible way to hold a conversation with Igor was when you had an umbrella. (CJ)
Not many people ever tasted Nanny Ogg’s home-made brandy; it was technically impossible. Once it encountered the warmth of the human mouth it immediately turned into fumes. You drank it via your sinuses. (CJ)
‘I feel a bit…odd,’ said Agnes.
‘Ah, could be the drink,’ said Nanny.
‘I haven’t had any!’
‘No? Well, there’s the problem right there.’ (CJ)
‘How does Perdita work, then?’ she said.
‘Look, you know the part of you that wants to do all the things you don’t dare do, and thinks the thoughts you don’t dare think?’
Nanny’s face stayed blank. ‘Like ... maybe ... rip off all your clothes and run naked in the rain?’ she hazarded.
‘Oh, yes. Right,’ said Nanny.
‘Well ... I suppose Perdita is that part of me.’
‘Really? I’ve always been that part of me,’ said Nanny. ‘The important thing is to remember where you left your clothes.’ (CJ)
People often got the wrong idea about Nanny Ogg, and she took care to see that they did. (CJ)
Nanny could find an innuendo in ‘Good morning.’ She could certainly find one in ‘innuendo.’ (CJ)
‘But that’s just a bit of superstition, isn’t it? Witches don’t have to come in threes.’
‘Oh, no. Course not,’ said Nanny. ‘You can have any number up to about, oh, four or five.’
‘What happens if there’s more, then? Something awful?’
‘Bloody great row, usually,’ said Nanny. (CJ)
…books that were all about the world tended to be written by people who knew all about books rather than all about the world. (CJ)
‘Just as Om reached out his hand to save the prophet Brutha from the torture, so will he spread his wings over me in my time of trial,’ said Oats, but he sounded as though he was trying to reassure himself rather than Nanny. He went on: ‘I’ve got a pamphlet if you would like to know more,’ and this time the tone was much more positive, as if the existence of Om was a little uncertain whereas the existence of pamphlets was obvious to any open-minded rational-thinking person. (CJ)
‘Vampires are very anal-retentive, you see?’
‘I shouldn’t like meeting one that was the opposite,’ said Nanny. (CJ)
Mrs Scorbic was permanently angry, in the same way mountains are permanently large. (CJ)
... there was probably no combination of vowels that could do justice to the cry Nanny Ogg made on seeing a young baby. It included sounds known only to cats. (CJ)
'Nothing like being stared at by a teddybear to put a young man off his stroke,' said Nanny Ogg. (CJ)
‘You mean just because she’s a woman she should use sexual wiles on him?’ said Magrat. ‘This is so ... so ... well, it’s so Nanny Ogg, that’s all I can say.’
‘She should use any wile she can lay her hands on,’ said Nanny. (CJ)
‘… if I knew I’d got a heel that would kill me if someone stuck a spear in it, I’d go into battle wearing very heavy boots-’ (CJ)
'I understood every word in that sentence, but not the sentence itself.' (CJ)
He didn't gird his loins, because he wasn't certain how you did that and had never dared ask ... (CJ)
… the seeker after truth had found truths instead. The Third Journey of the Prophet Cena, for example, seemed remarkably like a retranslation of the Testament of Sand in the Laotan Book of the Whole. On one shelf alone he found forty-three remarkably similar accounts of a great flood, and in every single one of them a man very much like Bishop Horn had saved the elect of mankind by building a magical boat. Details varied of course. Sometimes the boat was made of wood, sometimes of banana leaves. Sometimes the news of the emerging dry land was brought by a swan, sometimes by an iguana. Of course these stories in the chronicles of other religions were mere folktales and myth, while the voyage detailed in the Book of Cena was holy truth. But nevertheless... (CJ)
Hodgesaargh didn’t much mind who ran the castle. For hundreds of years the falconers had simply got on with the important things, like falconry, which needed a lot of training, and left the kinging to amateurs. (CJ)
Everything was a test. Everything was a competition. Life put them in front of you every day. You watched yourself all the time. You had to make choices. You never got told which ones were right. Oh, some of the priests said you got given marks afterwards but what was the point of that? (CJ)
‘Am I dyin’?’
YES.
‘Will I die?’
YES.
Granny Weatherwax thought this over. ‘But from your point of view, everyone is dying and everyone will die, right?’
YES.
‘So you aren’t actually bein’ a lot of help, strictly speakin’.’ (CJ)
CHOOSE, he said. YOU ARE GOOD AT CHOOSING, I BELIEVE.
‘Is there any advice you could be givin’ me?’ said Granny.
CHOOSE RIGHT. (CJ)
Agnes loathed him. Perdita merely hated him, which is the opposite pole to love and just as attractive. (CJ)
One or two of the old barrows had been exposed over the years, their huge stones attracting their own folklore. If you left your unshod horse at one of them overnight and placed sixpence on the stone, in the morning the sixpence would be gone and you’d never see your horse again, either... (CJ)
Fewer birds could sit more meekly than the Lancre wowhawk, or lappet-faced worrier, a carnivore permanently on the lookout for the vegetarian option. It spent most of its time asleep in any case, but when forced to find food it tended to sit on a branch out of the wind somewhere and wait for something to die. When in the mews the worriers would initially perch like other birds and then, talons clamped to the pole, doze off peacefully upside down. Hodgesaargh bred them because they were found only in Lancre and he liked the plumage, but all reputable falconers agreed that for hunting purposes the only way you could reliably bring down prey with a wowhawk was by using it in a slingshot. (CJ)
‘You wouldn’t let a poor old lady go off and confront monsters on a wild night like this, would you?’
They watched him owlishly for a while just in case something interestingly nasty was going to happen to him.
The someone near the back said, ‘So why should we care what happens to monsters?’
And Shawn Ogg said, ‘That’s Granny Weatherwax, that is.’
‘But she’s an old lady!’ Oats insisted.
The crowd took a few steps back. Oats was clearly a dangerous man to be around.
‘Would you go out alone on a night like this?’ he said.
The voice at the back said, ‘Depends if I knew where Granny Weatherwax was.’ (CJ)
‘No one can be quiet like Esme. You can hardly hear yourself think for the silence.’ (CJ)
'People like to see a bit of bellowing in a king. The odd belch is always popular too. Even a bit of carousing'd help if he could manage it. You know, quaffing and such.' (CJ)
'People need something today but they generally need something else tomorrow.' (CJ)
Verence was technically an absolute ruler and would continue to be so provided he didn’t make the mistake of repeatedly asking Lancrestrians to do anything they didn’t want to do. (CJ)
‘Once people find out you’re a vampire they act as if you’re some kind of monster.’ (CJ)
‘Bein’ human means judgin’ all the time,’ said the voice behind him. ‘This and that, good and bad, making choices every day… that’s human.’
‘And are you sure you make the right decisions?’
‘No. But I do the best I can.’
‘And hope for mercy, eh?’
A bony finger prodded him in the back.
‘Mercy’s a fine thing, but judgin’ comes first. Otherwise you don’t know what you’re bein’ merciful about.’ (CJ)
‘There’s no greys, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.’
‘It’s a lot more complicated than that -’
‘No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.’ (CJ)
‘But you read a lot of books, I’m thinking. Hard to have faith, ain’t it, when you’ve read too many books?’ (CJ)
‘Many people find faith a great solace,’ he said. He wished he was one of them.
‘Good.’
‘Really? Somehow I thought you’d argue.’
‘It’s not my place to tell ‘em what to believe, if they act decent.’
‘But it’s not something that you feel drawn to, perhaps, in the darker hours?’
‘No. I’ve already got a hot water bottle.’ (CJ)
Nanny Ogg had always considered herself unshockable, but there's no such thing. Shocks can come from unexpected directions. (CJ)
People were good at imagining hells, and some they occupied while they were alive. (CJ)
‘There have to be rules, Mistress Weatherwax.’
‘And what’s the first one that your Om requires, then?’
‘That believers should worship no other god but Om,’ said Oats promptly.
‘Oh yes? That’s gods for you. Very self-centred, as a rule.’ (CJ)
'... but that's what true faith would mean, y'see? Sacrificin' your own life, one day at a time, to the flame, declarin' the truth of it, workin' for it, breathin' the soul of it. That's religion. Anything else is just ... is just bein' nice. And a way of keepin' in touch with the neighbours.' (CJ)
He was trying to find some help in the ancient military journals of General Tacticus, whose intelligent campaigning had been so successful that he’d lent his very name to the detailed prosecution of martial endeavour, and had actually found a section headed What to Do If One Army Occupies a Well-fortified and Superior Ground and the Other Does Not, but since the first sentence read ‘Endeavour to be the one inside’ he’d rather lost heart. (CJ)
The role of the lower intestine in the efforts to build a better nation is one that is often neglected by historians. (CJ)
And to think I thought it was an allegorical creature,’ said the priest.
‘Well? Even allegories have to live,’ said Granny Weatherwax. (CJ)
There’s no point in having underlings if you don’t let them be the first to go through suspicious doors. (CJ)
‘Remember - that which does not kill us can only make us stronger.’
‘And that which does kill us leaves us dead!’ (CJ)
Mobs become uncertain very quickly, in view of the absence of a central brain ... (CJ)
‘Oh, don’t blame yourself, Mrs. Ogg. I’m sure others will do that for you-’ (CJ)
'Time goes so quickly when you're dead.' (CJ)
'Don't trust the cannibal just 'cos he's usin' a knife and fork.' (CJ)
'But now, apparently, we're in modern times.'
'That's what they say,' murmured Granny.
'Well, madam, I've never taken too much notice of them. Fifty years later they never seem so modern at all.' (CJ)
... evil might come animal sharp in the night or greyly by day on a list ... (CJ)
Granny Weatherwax had a primal snore. It had never been tamed. No one had ever had to sleep next to it, to curb its wilder excesses by means of a kick, a prod in the small of the back or a pillow used as a bludgeon. (CJ)
'Don't do anything I wouldn't do, if you ever find anything I wouldn't do.' (CJ)
