Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett
People look down on stuff like geography and meteorology, and not only because they’re standing on one and being soaked by the other. They don’t look quite like real science. But geography is only physics slowed down and with a few trees stuck on it, and meteorology is full of excitingly fashionable chaos and complexity. (FC)
…summer isn’t a time. It’s a place as well. Summer is a moving creature and likes to go south for the winter. (FC)
Dwarfs regard baking as part of the art of warfare. When they make rock cakes, no simile is intended. (FC)
I AM DEATH, NOT TAXES. I TURN UP ONLY ONCE. (FC)
Sergeant Colon went back to his desk, surreptitiously opened his drawer and pulled out the book he was reading. It was called Animal Husbandry. He’d been a bit worried about the title - you heard stories about strange folk in the country - but it turned out to be nothing more than a book about how cattle and pigs and sheep should breed.
Now he was wondering where to get a book that taught them how to read. (FC)
Stupid men are often capable of things the clever would not dare to contemplate... (FC)
What changed history were the smaller things. Often a few strokes of the pen would go the trick. (FC)
Constable Visit was an Omnian, whose country’s traditional approach to evangelism was to put unbelievers to torture and the sword. Things had become a lot more civilized these days but Omnians still had a strenuous and indefatigable approach to spreading the Word, and had merely changed the nature of the weapons. Constable Visit spent his days off in company with his co-religionist Smite-The-Unbeliever-With-Cunning-Arguments, ringing doorbells and causing people to hide behind the furniture everywhere in the city. (FC)
Detritus, despite a room-temperature IQ, made a good copper and a damn good sergeant. He had that special type of stupidity that was hard to fool. (FC)
Detritus was particularly good when it came to asking questions. He had three basic ones. They were the direct (‘Did you do it?’), the persistent (‘Are you sure it wasn’t you what done it?’) and the subtle (‘It was you what done it, wasn’t it?’). Although they were not the most cunning questions ever devised, Detritus’ talent was to go on patiently asking them for hours on end, until he got the right answer, which was generally something like: ‘Yes! Yes! I did it! I did it! Now please tell me what it was I did!’ (FC)
‘Oh, well, if you prefer, I can recognize handwriting,’ said the imp proudly. ‘I’m quite advanced.’
Vimes pulled out his notebook and held it up. ‘Like this?’ he said.
The imp squinted for a moment. ‘Yep,’ it said. ‘That’s handwriting, sure enough. Curly bits, spiky bits, all joined together. Yep. Handwriting. I’d recognize it anywhere.’ (FC)
Anatomy was an important study at the Alchemists’ Guilde, owing to the ancient theory that the human body represented a microcosm of the universe, although when you saw one opened up it was hard to imagine which part of the universe was small and purple and went blomp-blomp when you prodded it. (FC)
Rumour is information distilled so finely that it can filter through anything. It does not need doors or windows – sometimes it doesn’t even need people. It can exist free and wild, running from ear to ear without ever touching lips. (FC)
‘Do you want me to get a doctor?’
‘Are you mad? We want him to live!’ (FC)
'They think they want good government and justice for all, Vimes, yet what is it they really crave, deep in their hearts? Only that things go on as normal and tomorrow is pretty much like today.' (FC)
'You are armigerous, Nobby.'
Bobby nodded. 'But I got a special shampoo for it, sir.' (FC)
Corporal Nobbs sidled in. It was another special trait of his that he could sidle forwards as well as sideways. (FC)
Royalty was like dandelions. No matter how many heads you chopped off, the roots were still there underground, waiting to spring up again. (FC)
Vimes sighed. He was an honest man. He’d always felt that was one of the bigger defects in his personality. (FC)
FWhen Nobby had gone Vimes reached behind the desk and picked up a faded copy of Twurp’s Peerage or, as he personally thought of it, the guide to the criminal classes. You wouldn’t find slum dwellers in these pages, but you would find their landlords. And, while it was regarded as pretty good evidence of criminality to be living in a slum, for some reason owning a whole street of them merely got you invited to the very best social occasions. (FC)
... where Nobby went wrong was thinking small. He sidled into places and punched things that weren't worth much. If only he'd sidled into continents and stolen entire cities, slaughtering many of the inhabitants in the process, he'd have been a pillar of the community. (FC)
Sometimes you needed a bastard. (FC)
He'd said to the people: you're free. And they said hooray, and then he showed them what freedom costs and they called him a tyrant .... (FC)
That's rumour for you. If we could modulate it with the truth, how useful it could be .... (FC)
'Oh, it's easy to be happy when you don't know any different....' (FC)
Igneous had always found the general denial was more reliable than the specific refutation. (FC)
By now, if it had been a dwarf bar, the floor would be sticky with beer, the air would be full of flying quaff, and people would be singing. They’d probably be singing the latest dwarf tune, Gold, Gold, Gold, or one of the old favourites, like Gold, Gold, Gold, or the all-time biggie, Gold, Gold, Gold. (FC)
What's the good of Clues that are more mysterious than the mystery? (FC)
They were men who felt that The Time Had Come. Regimes can survive barbarian hordes, crazed terrorists and hooded secret societies, but they're in real trouble when prosperous and anonymous men sit around a big table and think thoughts like that. (FC)
People would probably say they had lived blameless lives.
But Vimes was a policeman. No one lived a completely blameless life. It might be just possible, by lying very still in a cellar somewhere, to get through a day without committing a crime. But only just. And, even then, you were probably guilty of loitering. (FC)
This always happens in any police chase anywhere. A heavily-laden lorry will always pull out of a side alley in front of the pursuit.
If vehicles aren’t involved, then it’ll be a man with a rack of garments. Or two men with a large sheet of glass.
There’s probably some kind of secret society behind all this. (FC)
Colon in particular had great difficulty with the idea that you went on investigating after someone had confessed. It outraged his training and experience. You got a confession and there it ended. You didn’t go around disbelieving people. You disbelieved people only when they said they were innocent. Only guilty people were trustworthy. (FC)
As her tutors had said, there were two signs of a good alchemist: the Athletic and the Intellectual. A good alchemist of the first sort was someone who could leap over the bench and be on the far side of a safely thick wall in three seconds, and a good alchemist of the second sort was someone who knew exactly when to do this. (FC)
‘I thought dwarfs loved gold,’ said Angua.
‘They just say that to get it into bed.’ (FC)
‘It’s like that in the Watch, too,’ said Angua. ‘You can be any sex you like provided you act male. There’s no men and women in the Watch, just a bunch of lads. You’ll soon learn the language. Basically it’s how much beer you supped last night, how strong the curry was you had afterwards, and where you were sick. Just think egotesticle.’ (FC)
There’s a dwarfish saying: ‘All trees are felled at ground-level’ - although this is said to be an excessively bowdlerized translation for a saw which more literally means, ‘When his hands are higher than your head, his groin is level with your teeth.’ (FC)
The real world was far too real to leave neat little hints. It was full of too many things. It wasn’t by eliminating the impossible that you got at the truth, however improbable; it was by the much harder process of eliminating the possibilities. (FC)
And he’s mastered policing as it is practised by the majority of forces in the universe, which is, basically, screaming angrily at people until they give in. (FC)
…Cockbill Street was where people lived who were worse than poor, because they didn’t know how poor they were. If you asked them they would probably say something like ‘mustn’t grumble’ or ‘there’s far worse off than us’ or ‘we’ve always kept uz heads above water and we don’t owe nobody nowt.’
He could here his granny speaking. ‘No one’s too poor to buy soap.’ Of course, many people were. But in Cockbill Street they bought soap just the same. The table might not have any food on it but by gods, it was well scrubbed. That was Cockbill Street, where what you mainly ate was your pride. (FC)
What a mess the world was in, Vimes reflected. Constable Visit had told him the meek would inherit it, and what had the poor devils done to deserve that? (FC)
People said that there was one law for the rich and one law for the poor, but it wasn’t true. There was no law for those who made the law, and no law for the incorrigibly lawless. All the laws and rules were for those people stupid enough to think like Cockbill Street people. (FC)
There were no public health laws in Ankh-Morpork. It would be like installing smoke detectors in Hell. (FC)
‘Was there anything else on the dinner menu?’ ‘Vole-au-vents and Cream of Rat,’ said Gimlet. ‘All hygienically prepared.’
‘How do you mean, “hygienically prepared”?’ said Carrot.
‘The chef is under strict orders to wash his hands afterwards.’
The assembled dwarfs nodded. This was certainly pretty hygienic. You didn’t want people going around with ratty hands. (FC)
'No one can be as sane as he is without being mad.' (FC)
‘You have the mind of a true policeman, Vimes.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Really? Was it a compliment?’ (FC)
‘D*mn!’ said Carrot, a difficult linguistic feat. (FC)
‘Carrot, I think you’ve got something wrong with your head,’ said Angua.
‘What?’
‘I think you may have got it stuck up your bum.’ (FC)
He’d heard rumors - who hadn’t? - that working in the Watch was the rightful king of Ankh-Morpork. He’d have to admit that, if you wanted to hide a secret heir to the throne, you couldn’t possibly hide him more carefully than under the face of C.W. St.J. Nobbs. (FC)
Every real copper knew you didn’t go around looking for Clues so that you could find out Who Done It. No, you started out with a pretty good idea of Who Done It. That way, you knew what Clues to look for. (FC)
‘It’s astonishing. Frankly astonishing. The man actually has charisn’tma.’
‘Your meaning?’ ‘I mean he’s so dreadful he fascinates people.’ (FC)
‘You’re being reasonable again!’ snapped Angua. ‘You’re deliberately seeing everyone’s point of view! Can’t you try to be unfair even once?’ (FC)
'Just because someone's a member of an ethnic minority doesn't mean they're not a nasty small-minded little jerk ...' (FC)
It was such a relief to be right, even though you knew you'd only got there by trying every possible way to be wrong. (FC)
‘Why are you all covered in crap, Fred?’
‘Well, sir, you know that creek that you’re up without a paddle? It started there and it’s got worse, sir.’ (FC)
You never ever volunteered. Not even if a sergeant stood there and said, ‘We need someone to drink alcohol, bottles of, and make love, passionate, to women, for the use of.’ There was always a snag. If a choir of angels asked for volunteers for Paradise to step forward, Nobby knew enough to take one smart pace to the rear. (FC)
‘You really intend to prefer charges?’
‘I’d prefer violence,’ said Vimes loudly. ‘Charges is what I’m going to have to settle for.’ (FC)
‘You are in favour of the common people?’ said Dragon mildly.
‘The common people?’ said Vimes. ‘They’re nothing special. They’re no different from the rich and powerful except they’ve got no money or power. But the law should be there to balance things up a bit.’ (FC)
It was hard enough to kill a vampire. You could stake them down and turn them into dust and ten years later someone drops a drop of blood in the wrong place and guess who’s back? They returned more times than raw broccoli. (FC)
Only crimes could take place in darkness. Punishment had to be done in the light. That was the job of a good watchman, Carrot always said. To light a candle in the dark. (FC)
The Patrician waved a hand towards the stairs and his office full of paper. ‘Nevertheless, Commander, I’ve had no less than nine missives from leading religious figures declaring that he is an abomination.’
‘Yes, sir. I’ve given that viewpoint a lot of thought, sir, and reached the following conclusion: arseholes to the lot of ‘em, sir.’ (FC)
‘Funny thing, that,’ said Nobby. ‘You never get bad fortunes in cookies, ever noticed that? They never say stuff like: “Oh dear, things’re going to be really bad.” I mean, they’re never misfortune cookies.’
Vimes lit a cigar and shook the match to put it out. ‘That, Corporal, is because of one of the fundamental driving forces of the universe.’
‘What? Like, people who read fortune cookies are the lucky ones?’ said Nobby.
‘No. Because people who sell fortune cookies want to go on selling them.’ (FC)
'Is It Frightening To Be Free?'
'You said it.'
'You Say To People "Throw Off Your Chains" And They Make New Chains For Themselves?'
'Seems to be a major human activity, yes.' (FC)
I’ll have to go, Angua thought as they strolled on down the street. Sooner or later he’ll see that it can’t really work out. Werewolves and humans…we’ve both got too much to lose. Sooner or later I’ll have to leave him.
But, for one day at a time, let it be tomorrow. (FC)
…summer isn’t a time. It’s a place as well. Summer is a moving creature and likes to go south for the winter. (FC)
Dwarfs regard baking as part of the art of warfare. When they make rock cakes, no simile is intended. (FC)
I AM DEATH, NOT TAXES. I TURN UP ONLY ONCE. (FC)
Sergeant Colon went back to his desk, surreptitiously opened his drawer and pulled out the book he was reading. It was called Animal Husbandry. He’d been a bit worried about the title - you heard stories about strange folk in the country - but it turned out to be nothing more than a book about how cattle and pigs and sheep should breed.
Now he was wondering where to get a book that taught them how to read. (FC)
Stupid men are often capable of things the clever would not dare to contemplate... (FC)
What changed history were the smaller things. Often a few strokes of the pen would go the trick. (FC)
Constable Visit was an Omnian, whose country’s traditional approach to evangelism was to put unbelievers to torture and the sword. Things had become a lot more civilized these days but Omnians still had a strenuous and indefatigable approach to spreading the Word, and had merely changed the nature of the weapons. Constable Visit spent his days off in company with his co-religionist Smite-The-Unbeliever-With-Cunning-Arguments, ringing doorbells and causing people to hide behind the furniture everywhere in the city. (FC)
Detritus, despite a room-temperature IQ, made a good copper and a damn good sergeant. He had that special type of stupidity that was hard to fool. (FC)
Detritus was particularly good when it came to asking questions. He had three basic ones. They were the direct (‘Did you do it?’), the persistent (‘Are you sure it wasn’t you what done it?’) and the subtle (‘It was you what done it, wasn’t it?’). Although they were not the most cunning questions ever devised, Detritus’ talent was to go on patiently asking them for hours on end, until he got the right answer, which was generally something like: ‘Yes! Yes! I did it! I did it! Now please tell me what it was I did!’ (FC)
‘Oh, well, if you prefer, I can recognize handwriting,’ said the imp proudly. ‘I’m quite advanced.’
Vimes pulled out his notebook and held it up. ‘Like this?’ he said.
The imp squinted for a moment. ‘Yep,’ it said. ‘That’s handwriting, sure enough. Curly bits, spiky bits, all joined together. Yep. Handwriting. I’d recognize it anywhere.’ (FC)
Anatomy was an important study at the Alchemists’ Guilde, owing to the ancient theory that the human body represented a microcosm of the universe, although when you saw one opened up it was hard to imagine which part of the universe was small and purple and went blomp-blomp when you prodded it. (FC)
Rumour is information distilled so finely that it can filter through anything. It does not need doors or windows – sometimes it doesn’t even need people. It can exist free and wild, running from ear to ear without ever touching lips. (FC)
‘Do you want me to get a doctor?’
‘Are you mad? We want him to live!’ (FC)
'They think they want good government and justice for all, Vimes, yet what is it they really crave, deep in their hearts? Only that things go on as normal and tomorrow is pretty much like today.' (FC)
'You are armigerous, Nobby.'
Bobby nodded. 'But I got a special shampoo for it, sir.' (FC)
Corporal Nobbs sidled in. It was another special trait of his that he could sidle forwards as well as sideways. (FC)
Royalty was like dandelions. No matter how many heads you chopped off, the roots were still there underground, waiting to spring up again. (FC)
Vimes sighed. He was an honest man. He’d always felt that was one of the bigger defects in his personality. (FC)
FWhen Nobby had gone Vimes reached behind the desk and picked up a faded copy of Twurp’s Peerage or, as he personally thought of it, the guide to the criminal classes. You wouldn’t find slum dwellers in these pages, but you would find their landlords. And, while it was regarded as pretty good evidence of criminality to be living in a slum, for some reason owning a whole street of them merely got you invited to the very best social occasions. (FC)
... where Nobby went wrong was thinking small. He sidled into places and punched things that weren't worth much. If only he'd sidled into continents and stolen entire cities, slaughtering many of the inhabitants in the process, he'd have been a pillar of the community. (FC)
Sometimes you needed a bastard. (FC)
He'd said to the people: you're free. And they said hooray, and then he showed them what freedom costs and they called him a tyrant .... (FC)
That's rumour for you. If we could modulate it with the truth, how useful it could be .... (FC)
'Oh, it's easy to be happy when you don't know any different....' (FC)
Igneous had always found the general denial was more reliable than the specific refutation. (FC)
By now, if it had been a dwarf bar, the floor would be sticky with beer, the air would be full of flying quaff, and people would be singing. They’d probably be singing the latest dwarf tune, Gold, Gold, Gold, or one of the old favourites, like Gold, Gold, Gold, or the all-time biggie, Gold, Gold, Gold. (FC)
What's the good of Clues that are more mysterious than the mystery? (FC)
They were men who felt that The Time Had Come. Regimes can survive barbarian hordes, crazed terrorists and hooded secret societies, but they're in real trouble when prosperous and anonymous men sit around a big table and think thoughts like that. (FC)
People would probably say they had lived blameless lives.
But Vimes was a policeman. No one lived a completely blameless life. It might be just possible, by lying very still in a cellar somewhere, to get through a day without committing a crime. But only just. And, even then, you were probably guilty of loitering. (FC)
This always happens in any police chase anywhere. A heavily-laden lorry will always pull out of a side alley in front of the pursuit.
If vehicles aren’t involved, then it’ll be a man with a rack of garments. Or two men with a large sheet of glass.
There’s probably some kind of secret society behind all this. (FC)
Colon in particular had great difficulty with the idea that you went on investigating after someone had confessed. It outraged his training and experience. You got a confession and there it ended. You didn’t go around disbelieving people. You disbelieved people only when they said they were innocent. Only guilty people were trustworthy. (FC)
As her tutors had said, there were two signs of a good alchemist: the Athletic and the Intellectual. A good alchemist of the first sort was someone who could leap over the bench and be on the far side of a safely thick wall in three seconds, and a good alchemist of the second sort was someone who knew exactly when to do this. (FC)
‘I thought dwarfs loved gold,’ said Angua.
‘They just say that to get it into bed.’ (FC)
‘It’s like that in the Watch, too,’ said Angua. ‘You can be any sex you like provided you act male. There’s no men and women in the Watch, just a bunch of lads. You’ll soon learn the language. Basically it’s how much beer you supped last night, how strong the curry was you had afterwards, and where you were sick. Just think egotesticle.’ (FC)
There’s a dwarfish saying: ‘All trees are felled at ground-level’ - although this is said to be an excessively bowdlerized translation for a saw which more literally means, ‘When his hands are higher than your head, his groin is level with your teeth.’ (FC)
The real world was far too real to leave neat little hints. It was full of too many things. It wasn’t by eliminating the impossible that you got at the truth, however improbable; it was by the much harder process of eliminating the possibilities. (FC)
And he’s mastered policing as it is practised by the majority of forces in the universe, which is, basically, screaming angrily at people until they give in. (FC)
…Cockbill Street was where people lived who were worse than poor, because they didn’t know how poor they were. If you asked them they would probably say something like ‘mustn’t grumble’ or ‘there’s far worse off than us’ or ‘we’ve always kept uz heads above water and we don’t owe nobody nowt.’
He could here his granny speaking. ‘No one’s too poor to buy soap.’ Of course, many people were. But in Cockbill Street they bought soap just the same. The table might not have any food on it but by gods, it was well scrubbed. That was Cockbill Street, where what you mainly ate was your pride. (FC)
What a mess the world was in, Vimes reflected. Constable Visit had told him the meek would inherit it, and what had the poor devils done to deserve that? (FC)
People said that there was one law for the rich and one law for the poor, but it wasn’t true. There was no law for those who made the law, and no law for the incorrigibly lawless. All the laws and rules were for those people stupid enough to think like Cockbill Street people. (FC)
There were no public health laws in Ankh-Morpork. It would be like installing smoke detectors in Hell. (FC)
‘Was there anything else on the dinner menu?’ ‘Vole-au-vents and Cream of Rat,’ said Gimlet. ‘All hygienically prepared.’
‘How do you mean, “hygienically prepared”?’ said Carrot.
‘The chef is under strict orders to wash his hands afterwards.’
The assembled dwarfs nodded. This was certainly pretty hygienic. You didn’t want people going around with ratty hands. (FC)
'No one can be as sane as he is without being mad.' (FC)
‘You have the mind of a true policeman, Vimes.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Really? Was it a compliment?’ (FC)
‘D*mn!’ said Carrot, a difficult linguistic feat. (FC)
‘Carrot, I think you’ve got something wrong with your head,’ said Angua.
‘What?’
‘I think you may have got it stuck up your bum.’ (FC)
He’d heard rumors - who hadn’t? - that working in the Watch was the rightful king of Ankh-Morpork. He’d have to admit that, if you wanted to hide a secret heir to the throne, you couldn’t possibly hide him more carefully than under the face of C.W. St.J. Nobbs. (FC)
Every real copper knew you didn’t go around looking for Clues so that you could find out Who Done It. No, you started out with a pretty good idea of Who Done It. That way, you knew what Clues to look for. (FC)
‘It’s astonishing. Frankly astonishing. The man actually has charisn’tma.’
‘Your meaning?’ ‘I mean he’s so dreadful he fascinates people.’ (FC)
‘You’re being reasonable again!’ snapped Angua. ‘You’re deliberately seeing everyone’s point of view! Can’t you try to be unfair even once?’ (FC)
'Just because someone's a member of an ethnic minority doesn't mean they're not a nasty small-minded little jerk ...' (FC)
It was such a relief to be right, even though you knew you'd only got there by trying every possible way to be wrong. (FC)
‘Why are you all covered in crap, Fred?’
‘Well, sir, you know that creek that you’re up without a paddle? It started there and it’s got worse, sir.’ (FC)
You never ever volunteered. Not even if a sergeant stood there and said, ‘We need someone to drink alcohol, bottles of, and make love, passionate, to women, for the use of.’ There was always a snag. If a choir of angels asked for volunteers for Paradise to step forward, Nobby knew enough to take one smart pace to the rear. (FC)
‘You really intend to prefer charges?’
‘I’d prefer violence,’ said Vimes loudly. ‘Charges is what I’m going to have to settle for.’ (FC)
‘You are in favour of the common people?’ said Dragon mildly.
‘The common people?’ said Vimes. ‘They’re nothing special. They’re no different from the rich and powerful except they’ve got no money or power. But the law should be there to balance things up a bit.’ (FC)
It was hard enough to kill a vampire. You could stake them down and turn them into dust and ten years later someone drops a drop of blood in the wrong place and guess who’s back? They returned more times than raw broccoli. (FC)
Only crimes could take place in darkness. Punishment had to be done in the light. That was the job of a good watchman, Carrot always said. To light a candle in the dark. (FC)
The Patrician waved a hand towards the stairs and his office full of paper. ‘Nevertheless, Commander, I’ve had no less than nine missives from leading religious figures declaring that he is an abomination.’
‘Yes, sir. I’ve given that viewpoint a lot of thought, sir, and reached the following conclusion: arseholes to the lot of ‘em, sir.’ (FC)
‘Funny thing, that,’ said Nobby. ‘You never get bad fortunes in cookies, ever noticed that? They never say stuff like: “Oh dear, things’re going to be really bad.” I mean, they’re never misfortune cookies.’
Vimes lit a cigar and shook the match to put it out. ‘That, Corporal, is because of one of the fundamental driving forces of the universe.’
‘What? Like, people who read fortune cookies are the lucky ones?’ said Nobby.
‘No. Because people who sell fortune cookies want to go on selling them.’ (FC)
'Is It Frightening To Be Free?'
'You said it.'
'You Say To People "Throw Off Your Chains" And They Make New Chains For Themselves?'
'Seems to be a major human activity, yes.' (FC)
I’ll have to go, Angua thought as they strolled on down the street. Sooner or later he’ll see that it can’t really work out. Werewolves and humans…we’ve both got too much to lose. Sooner or later I’ll have to leave him.
But, for one day at a time, let it be tomorrow. (FC)
