And then there were these ‘light years’. The Abbot had seen nearly fifteen years go past, and they had seemed quite heavy at the time – full of problems, swollen with responsibilities. Lighter ones would have been better. (Truck)
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It wasn’t just that his brain was writing cheques that his body couldn’t cash. It had gone beyond that. Now his feet were borrowing money that his legs hadn’t got, and his back muscles were looking for loose change under the sofa cushions. (FE)
... the dwarfs found out how to turn lead into gold by doing it the hard way. The difference between that and the easy way is that the hard way works. (TT)
A good way to survive on the playing fields of Hugglestones was to run very fast and shout a lot while inexplicably always being a long way from the ball. This had earned him, oddly enough, a reputation for being keen, and keenness was highly prized at Hugglestones, if only because actual achievement was so rare. The staff at Hugglestones believed that in sufficient quantities ‘being keen’ could take the place of lesser attributes like intelligence, foresight and training. (TT)
'I’m a world-famous liar.’
‘Is that true?’ ‘No.’ ‘What about you being the world’s greatest lover?’ There was silence for a while. ‘Well maybe I’m only No. 2,’ said Casanunda. ‘But I try harder.' (WA) All she could do for all of them was be herself, here and now, as hard as she could. (LL)
Gods don’t like people not doing much work. People who aren’t busy all the time might start to think. (SG)
'Want to stay on here? I had a word with your Dean. He gave you a bloody good reference.’
‘Did he? What did he say?’ ‘He said if I could get you to do any work for me I’d be lucky’, said Bill. (LC) But some did make it to the great melting pot called Ankh-Morpork. They arrived with no money– sailors charged what the market would bear, which was everything – but they had a mad gleam in their eye and they opened shops and restaurants and worked twenty-four hours a day. People called this the Ankh-Morpork Dream (of making piles of cash in a place where your death was unlikely to be a matter of public policy). And it was dreamed all the stronger by people who didn’t sleep. (IT)
Detritus has all the qualities of a good policemen: a loud voice, a commanding presence, and the ability not to let imagination get in the way of persistence. (PP)
When you were a Watchman, you were a Watchman all the time, which was a bit of a bargain for the city since it only paid you to be a Watchman for ten hours of every day. (MA)
'What’s a philosopher?’ said Brutha.
‘Someone who’s bright enough to find a job with no heavy lifting,’ said a voice in his head. (SG) Vimes maintained three tray: In, Out and Shake It All About; the last one was where he put everything he was too busy,
angry, tired or bewildered to do anything about. (Th) Every organisation needs someone to do those jobs it doesn’t want to do or secretly thinks don’t need doing. (DW)
'Be what?’
‘Pro-active, I think. It’s a word he’s using a lot.’ ‘What does that mean?’ ‘Well…in favour of activity, I suppose.’ ‘Really? Dangerous. In my experience, inactivity sees you through.' (LC) Lord Vetinari was sitting in the palace gardens watching the butterflies with an expression of mild annoyance. He found something very slightly offensive about the way they just fluttered around enjoying themselves in an unprofitable way. (IT)
'Take it from me, whenever you see a bunch of buggers puttering around talking about truth and beauty and the best way of attacking Ethics, you can bet your sandals it’s all because dozens of other poor buggers are doing all the real work around the place…' (SG)
It takes forty men with their feet on the ground to keep one man with his head in the air. (SG)
Victor had never worked for anything in his life. In his experience, jobs were things that happened to other people. (MP)
... magic had indeed once been wild and lawless, but had been tamed back in the mists of time by the Olden Ones, who had bound it to obey among other things the Law of Conservation of Reality; this demanded that the effort needed to achieve a goal should be the same regardless of the means used. In practical terms this meant that, say, creating the illusion of a glass of wine was relatively easy, since it involved merely the subtle shifting of light patterns. On the other hand, lifting a genuine wineglass a few feet in the air by sheer mental energy required several hours of systematic preparation if the wizard wished to prevent the simple principle of leverage flicking his brain out through his ears. (COM)
Things that try too hard to be funny often aren’t. (HFS)
She'd found 'nose to the grindstone' in a book. Apparently it meant 'to get on with things.' She didn't see why people were supposed to work hard if you ground their noses; it seemed more likely that they'd work hard if you promised to grind their noses if they didn't. (Dig)
... if there was any truth at all in Ponder’s tentative theory that things did change into other things, it led to the depressing thought that, well, the world was filling up with quitters, creatures which – instead of staying where they
were, and really making a go of life in the ocean or the swamp or wherever – were running away to lurk in some niche and grow legs And then the eagle lets go.
And almost always the tortoise plunges to its death. Everyone knows why the tortoise does this. Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off. No one knows why the eagle does this. There’s good eating on a tortoise but, considering the effort involved, there’s much better eating on practically anything else. It’s simply the delight of eagles to torment tortoises. But of course, what the eagle does not realize is that it is participating in a very crude form of natural selection. One day a tortoise will learn how to fly. (SG) |
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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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