'Men’s minds work different from ours, see. Their magic’s all numbers and angles and edges and what the stars are doing, as if that really mattered. It’s all power. It’s all-’ Granny paused, and dredged up her favourite word to describe all she despised in wizardry, ‘-jommetry.' (ER)
0 Comments
the magic of wizards, the magic of witches did not usually involve the application of much raw power. The difference is between hammers and levers. Witches generally tried to find the small point where a little changes made a lot of result. To make an avalanche you can either shake the mountain, or maybe you can just find exactly the right place to drop a snowflake. (SLF)
... the whole place began to revolve around the big man, gold being very dense and having a gravity of its own. (GP)
'Money is not a thing, it is not even a process. It is a kind of shared dream. We dream that a small disc of common metal is worth the price of a substantial meal. Once you wake up from that dream, you can swim in a sea of money.' (GP)
Mustrum Ridcully was notorious for not trying to understand things if there was anyone around to do it for him. (LC)
The Patrician was not a man you shook a finger at unless you wanted to end up being able to count only to nine. (GG)
There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty.
The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: ‘What’s up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don’t think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass! And at the other end of the bar the world is full of the other type of person, who has a broken glass, or a glass that has been carelessly knocked over (usually by one of the people calling for a larger glass), or who has no glass at all, because they were at the back of the crowd and had failed to catch the barman’s eye. (TT) 'You think the ringmaster runs the circus, do you? Only by the consent of the clowns, Mr Lipwig! Only by the consent of the clowns!' (MM)
Vetinari just used stick, or hit you over the head with the carrot. (MM)
... his presence was like a lead weight on a rubber sheet. It distorted the space around it. People didn’t immediately see him, but they sensed his presence. (MM)
If you moved with authority, you got a second or two extra. Authority was everything. (NW)
'Everyone needs their little dreams.’ Maurice truly believed that, too. If you knew what it was that people, really, really wanted, you very nearly controlled them. (AM)
... you found that what you really wanted was power and there were much politer ways of getting it. And then you realized that power was a bauble. Any thug had power. The true prize was control. Lord Vetinari knew that. When heavy weights were balanced on the scales, the trick was to know where to place your thumb.
And all control started with the self. (FE) 'Strength is good,’ said Wolf, folding Vimes’s clothes neatly. ‘But like some other good things, it only remains good if it is not possessed by too many people.' (FE)
A foot on the neck is nine points of the law. (IT)
It called out to something deep in the soul. Hold it in your hand, and you had power. More power than any bow or spear
- they just stored up your muscles’ power, when you thought about it. But the gonne gave you power from outside. You didn’t use it, it used you. (MA) 'What’s the good of having mastery over cosmic balance and knowing the secrets of fate if you can’t blow something
up?' (RM) 'My late husband always said that the only way to make money out of poor people is by keeping them poor.' (MM)
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)
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)
And if the Patrician was anything, he was the political equivalent of the old lady who saves bits of string because you never know when they might come in handy. (J)
Men take over. It is probably because of socks. (MR)
Oh dear, here we go again, thought Vimes. Why did I wait until I was married to become strangely attractive to powerful women? Why didn’t it happen to me when I was sixteen? I could have done with it then. (NW)
'Some people just become stupid with more authority.' (TOT)
'Round everyone up. My study. Ten minutes,’ said Ridcully. He was a great believer in this approach. A less direct Archchancellor would have wandered around looking for everyone. His policy was to find one person and make their
life difficult until everything happened the way he wanted it to.* *A policy adopted by almost all managers and several notable gods. (IT) |
Author
The world has lost Sir Terry, and it's so much the poorer for that. Vale Sir Terry. Categories
All
Archives
March 2023
|