sometimes by an iguana. Of course these stories in the chronicles of other religions were mere folktales and myth, while the voyage detailed in the Book of Cena was holy truth. But nevertheless. (CJ)
... the seeker after truth had found truths instead. The Third Journey of the Prophet Cena, for example, seemed remarkably like a retranslation of the Testament of Sand in the Laotan Book of the Whole. On one shelf alone he found forty-three remarkably similar accounts of a great flood, and in every single one of them a man very much like Bishop Horn had saved the elect of mankind by building a magical boat. Details varied of course. Sometimes the boat was made of wood, sometimes of banana leaves. Sometimes the news of the emerging dry land was brought by a swan,
sometimes by an iguana. Of course these stories in the chronicles of other religions were mere folktales and myth, while the voyage detailed in the Book of Cena was holy truth. But nevertheless. (CJ)
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Lancre people considered that anything religious that wasn’t said in some ancient and incomprehensible speech probably wasn’t the genuine article. (CJ)
Night poured over the desert. It came suddenly, in purple. In the clear air, the stars drilled down out of the sky, reminding any thoughtful watcher that it is in the deserts and high places that religions are generated. When men see nothing but bottomless infinity over their heads they have always had a driving and desperate urge to find someone to put in the way. (J)
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)
Dissecting people when they were still alive tended to be a priestly preoccupation; they thought mankind had been created by some sort of divine being and wanted to have a closer look at His handiwork. (MA)
Other theories about the ultimate start involve gods creating the universe out of the ribs, entrails and testicles of their father.* There are quite a lot of these. They are interesting, not for what they tell you about cosmology, but for what they say about people.
*Gods like a joke as much as anyone else. (LL) 'We get the gods we deserve,’ said Brutha, ‘and I think we don’t deserve any.' (SG)
'You can die for your country or your people or your family, but for a god you should live fully and busily, every day of a long life.' (SG)
Bishops move diagonally. That’s why they often turn up where the kings don’t expect them to be. (SG)
'Just because you can explain it doesn’t mean it’s not still a miracle.' (SG)
Gods didn’t mind atheists, if they were deep, hot, fiery, atheists like Simony, who spend their whole life hating gods for not existing. That sort of atheism was a rock. It was nearly belief. (SG)
'He says gods like to see an atheist around. Gives them something to aim at.' (SG)
There were twenty-three other novices in Brutha’s dormitory, on the principle that sleeping alone promoted sin. This always puzzled the novices themselves, since a moment’s reflection would suggest that there were whole ranges of sins only available in company. (SG)
Gods don’t like people not doing much work. People who aren’t busy all the time might start to think. (SG)
Most gods find it hard to walk and think at the same time. (SG)
There were all sorts of ways to petition the Great God, but they depended largely on how much you could afford, which was right and proper and exactly how things should be. After all, those who had achieved success in the world clearly had done it with the approval of the Great God, because it was impossible to believe that they had managed it with His disapproval. (SG)
'I said, that’s blasphemy!’
‘Blasphemy? How can I blaspheme? I’m a god!' (SG) The trouble with being a god is that you’ve got no one to pray to. (SG)
... the gods of the Disc have never bothered much about judging the souls of the dead, and so people only go to hell if that’s where they believe, in their deepest heart, that they deserve to go. Which they won’t do if they don’t know about it. This explains why it is important to shoot missionaries on sight. (E)
A number of religions in Ankh-Morpork still practiced human sacrifice, except that they didn’t really need to practice any more because they had got so good at it. City law said that only condemned criminals should be used, but that was all right because in most of the religions refusing to volunteer for sacrifice was an offence punishable by death. (GG)
It was the ritual that was important, not the gods. The gods were there to do the duties of a megaphone, because who else would people listen to. (P)
Throughout the history of the Disc most high priests have been serious, pious and conscientious men who have done their best to interpret the wishes of the gods, sometimes disembowelling or flaying alive hundreds of people in a day in order to make sure they’re getting it absolutely right. (P)
The gods are great believers in justice, at least as far as it extends to humans, and have been known to dispense it so enthusiastically that people miles away are turned into a cruet. (P)
In fact no gods anywhere play chess. They haven’t got the imagination. Gods prefer simple, vicious games, where you Do Not Achieve Transcendence but Go Straight To Oblivion; a key to the understanding of all religion is that a god’s idea of amusement is Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs. (WS)
Tragic heroes always moan when the gods take an interest in them, but it’s the people the gods ignore who get the really tough deals. (M)
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