Nanny’s philosophy of life was to do what seemed like a good idea at the time, and do it as hard as possible. It had never let her down. (Ma)
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His voice was strange, Jackson thought as he tried to size up this man, a voice which laid down words as a poker player laid down card, with finality and decision. He seemed slow rather than fast, but relentless. As hard to stop, once he came rolling at you, as an oncoming tank. (LW)
... he was allergic to the concept of two seven o'clocks in one day. (RS)
Moist von Lipwig had done some heavy work once and couldn't see any future in it, but he could look at it for hours ... (RS)
It’s just like I’ve always said – women have always had a greater stake in technology than have men. We’d still be living in trees, otherwise. Piped water, electric lighting, stoves that you don’t need to shove wood into – I reckon that behind half the great inventors in history were their wives, nagging them into fiding a cleaner way of doing the chores. (BOS)
You shouldn’t turn in on yourself. It’s not what being human means. You got to reach out. (BOS)
‘Do not seek perfection. None exists. All we can do is strive.’ (Sn)
‘What are we going to do, commander?’
And Vimes blinked and said, ‘Everything!’ (Sn) 'You've taken the first step.'
'There's a second step?' said Tiffany. 'No; there's another first step. Every step is a first step if it's a step in the right direction.' (ISWM) '… the more best you're capable of the more you should do.' (UA)
'I've got a huge workload!'
'Delegate!' 'You know I'm hopeless at delegating, sir!' 'Then delegate the job of delegating to someone who isn't!' (UA) '… you have to grab life or drop back into the crab bucket.' (UA)
Glenda enjoyed her job. She didn't have a career; they were for people who could not hold down jobs. (UA)
… since tired coppers didn't like having to do something, they did it good and hard, so with any luck they wouldn't have to do it again any time soon. (UA)
'Explain to him that we don't do things, Stibbons,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'We are academics.' (CCODD)
The ability of skinny old ladies to carry huge loads is phenomenal. Studies have shown that an ant can carry one hundred times its own weight, but there is no known limit to the lifting power of the average tiny eighty-year-old Spanish peasant grandmother. (RM)
The wizards, once they understood the urgency of a problem and then had lunch, and argued about the pudding, could actually work quite fast. Their method of finding a solution, as far as the Patrician could see, was by way of creative hubbub. If the question was, ‘What is the best spell for turning a book of poetry into a frog?’, then the one thing they would not do was look in any book with a title like Major Amphibian Spells in a Literary Environment: A Comparison. That would, somehow, be cheating. They would argue about it instead, standing around a blackboard, seizing the chalk from one another and rubbing out bits of what the current chalk-holder was writing before he’d finished the other end of the sentence. Somehow, though, it all seemed to work. (LH)
Thats wizards for you, he thought gloomily as he waded between the dripping arches, always probing the infinite but never noticing the definite, especially in the matter of household chores. (ER)
'You’re wizards!’ she screamed. ‘Bloody well wizz!' (ER)
Granny Weatherwax was not an advertisement for witchcraft. Oh, she was one of the best at it, no doubt about that. At a certain kind, certainly. But a girl starting out in life might well say to herself, is this it? You worked hard and denied yourself things and what you got at the end of it was hard work and self-denial. (SLF)
'... if you trust in yourself…’
‘Yes?’ ‘…and believe in your dreams…’ 'Yes?’ ‘…and follow your star…’ Miss Tick went on. 'Yes?’ ‘…you’ll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren’t so lazy. Goodbye.' (WFM) The path to wisdom does, in fact, begin with a single step.
Where people go wrong is in ignoring all the thousands of other steps that come after it. They make the single step of deciding to become one with the universe, and for some reason forget to take the logical next step of living for seventy years on a mountain and a daily bowl of rice and yak-butter tea that would give it any kind of meaning. While evidence says that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, they’re probably all on first steps. (H) Senior wizards of Unseen University are masters of dynamic inactivity. But when danger threatens they can be relied upon to pull together, although not necessarily, it must be said, in the same direction.
It has been pointed out that while they have understood that the first step on the path to wisdom is to become as a small child, they haven’t grasped that there is a second step. (PP) He had the kind of real deep tan that rich people spend ages trying to achieve with expensive holidays and bits of tinfoil, when really all you need to do to obtain one is work your arse off in the open air every day. (ER)
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The world has lost Sir Terry, and it's so much the poorer for that. Vale Sir Terry. Categories
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