He’d never been keen on heroes. But he realized that he needed them to be there, like forests and mountains ... he might never see them, but they filled some sort of hole in his mind. Some sort of hole in everyone’s mind. (LH)
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It is in the nature of things that those who save the world from certain destruction often don’t get hugely rewarded because, since the certain destruction does not take place, people are uncertain how certain it may have been and are, therefore, somewhat tight when it comes to handing out anything more substantial than praise. (LH)
One simple sword in the hands of a truly brave man would cut through a magical sword like suet. (LH)
There was, there always was, at the start and finish…the Code. They lived by the Code. You followed the Code, and you became part of the Code for those who followed you. The Code was it. Without the Code you weren’t a hero. You were just a thug in a loincloth. (LH)
Colon had always thought that heroes had some special kind of clockwork that made them go out and die famously for god, country, and apple pie, or whatever particular delicacy their mother made. It had never occurred to him that they might do it because they’d get yelled at if they didn’t. (J)
'... and then Jack chopped down the beanstalk, adding murder and ecological vandalism to the theft, enticement and trespass charges already mentioned, but he got away with it and lived happily ever after without so much as a guilty twinge about what he had done. Which proves that you can be excused just about anything if you’re a hero, because no one asks inconvenient questions.' (H)
They never worried about what other people thought. Mr Saveloy, who’d spent his whole life worrying about what other people thought and had been passed over for promotion and generally treated as a piece of furniture as a result, found
this strangely attractive. And they never agonized about anything, or wondered if they were doing the right thing. And they enjoyed themselves immensely. They had a kind of honour. He liked the Horde. They weren’t his kind of people. (IT) Cohen's father had taken him to a mountain top, when he was no more than a lad, and explained to him the hero’s creed and told him that there was no greater joy than to die in battle.
Cohen had seen the flaw in this straight away, and a lifetime’s experience had reinforced his belief that in fact a greater joy was to kill the other bugger in battle and end up sitting on a heap of gold higher than your horse. (IT) Self-doubt was not something regularly entertained within the Cohen cranium. When you’re trying to carry a struggling temple maiden and a sack of looted temple goods in one hand and fight off half a dozen angry priests with the other there is little time for reflection. Natural selection saw to it that professional heroes who at a crucial moment tended to ask themselves questions like ‘What is my purpose in life?’very quickly lacked both. (IT)
And he probably had saved the world a few times, but it had generally happened accidentally, while he was trying to do something else. So you almost certainly didn’t actually get any karmic points for that. It probably only counted if you started out by thinking in a loud way ‘By criminy, it’s jolly well time to save the world, and no two ways about it!’ instead of ‘Oh shit, this time I’m really going to die.' (IT)
'When I was just starting out in the barbarian hero business,’ said Cohen, ‘every bridge had a troll under it. And you couldn’t go through a forest like we’ve just gone through without a dozen goblins trying to chop your head off.’ He sighed. ‘I wonder what happened to ’em all?’
‘You,’ said the horse. ‘Well, yes. But I always thought there’d be some more. I always thought there’d be some more edges.' (TB) Not for the first time she reflected that there were many drawbacks to being a swordswoman, not least of which was that men didn’t take you seriously until you’d actually killed them, by which time it didn’t really matter anyway. (LF)
... any woman setting out to make a living by the sword isn’t about to go around looking like something off the cover of the more advanced kind of lingerie catalogue for the specialised buyer. (LF)
[Hrun] spent a great deal of time in similar situations, seeking gold or demons or distressed virgins and relieving them respectively of their owners, their lives, and at least one cause of their distress. (COM)
'An' there's some kid outside says he’s got to speak to you, hnah, specially,’ Snouty went on. ‘Shall I give him
a clip alongside the head?’ ‘What does he smell like?' said Vimes, sipping the scalding corrosive tea. ‘Bottom of a baboon’s cage, sarge.’ ‘Ah, Nobby Nobbs.' (NW) '... humans get such interesting diseases. I’d rather like to see how weasles turns out, too.’ One crusted eye winked at Death.
‘You mean measles?’ said the angel. ‘Weasles, I’m afraid,’ said Pestilence. ‘People are getting really careless with this bio-artificing. We’re talking boils that really bite.' (TOT) There was this to be said about the Smell of Foul Ole Ron, an odour so intense that it took on a personality of its own and fully justified the capital letter: after the initial shock the organs of smell just gave up and shut down, as if no more able to comprehend the thing than an oyster can comprehend the ocean. (TT)
'... being a short dog in deep snow is not good for the ol’ wossnames ..' (FE)
'They always give me bath salts,’ complained Nobby. ‘And bath soap and bubble bath and herbal bath lumps and tons of bath stuff and I can’t think why, ‘cos it’s not as if I hardly every has a bath. You’d think they’d take the hint, wouldn’t you?' (H)
'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) 'Baths is unhygienic,’ Granny declared. ‘You know I’ve never agreed with baths. Sittin’ around in your own dirt like that. (WA)
People have believed for hundreds of years that newts in a well mean that the water’s fresh and drinkable, and in
all that time never asked themselves whether the newts got out to go to the lavatory. (RM) The University sanitarium wasn’t very big, and was seldom used. Wizards tended to be either in rude health, or dead. The only medicine they generally required was an antacid formula and a dark room until lunch. (MP)
'A few twenty-mile runs and the Dean’d be a different man.’
‘Well, yes,’ said the Bursar. ‘He’d be dead.' (MP) 'That would be the senior masters, Master,’ said the Bursar. ‘I would say they are supremely fit, myself.’
‘Fit? The Dean looks like a man who’s swallered a bed!’ ‘Ah, but Master,’ said the Bursar smiling indulgently,‘the word ‘fit’, as I understand it, means ‘appropriate to a purpose,’ and I would say the body of the Dean is supremely appropriate to the purpose of sitting around all day and eating big heavy meals.' (MP) |
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