You couldn't tell someone with half his face dyed dark blue and a sword as big as he was that you weren't really a witch. You couldn't disappoint someone like that. (WFM)
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'I hope you are not impugning my men, sir.'
'Vimes, Sergeant Colon and Corporal Nobbs have never been pugn'd in their entire lives.' (J) If people don’t respect then they won’t fear; and if they don’t fear, how can you get them to believe? (SG)
Keeping secrets made you powerful. Being powerful earned you respect. Respect was hard currency. (SLF)
Granny sniffed. ‘Do they speak highly of me?’ she said.
‘No, they speak quietly of you, Esme.’ ‘Good.’ (SLF) … it is very hard to look dignified with a napkin tucked into one’s collar. (ER)
And it was all about survival, and survival was all about pride. You didn’t have much control over your life, but by Jimmy you could keep it clean and show the world you were poor but respectable. (Sn)
A dwarf on the up and up was really on his uppers, and upper-class dwarfs were lower class. A dwarf who was rich, healthy and had respect and his own rat farm justifiably felt at rock bottom and was held in low esteem. When you talked to dwarfs, you turned your mind upside down. (UA)
... witches, like beekeepers and big gorillas, went where they liked. (WS)
Unlike wizards, who like nothing better than a complicated hierarchy, witches don’t go in much for the structured approach to career progression. It’s up to each individual witch to take on a girl to hand the area over to when she dies. Witches are not by nature gregarious, at least with other witches, and they certainly don’t have leaders.
Granny Weatherwax was the most highly-regarded of the leaders they didn’t have. (WS) Granny suffered from robustly healthy teeth, which she considered a big drawback in a witch. She really envied Nanny Annaple, the witch over the mountain, who managed to lose all her teeth by the time she was twenty and had real crone-credibility. It meant you ate a lot of soup, but you also get a lot of respect. (ER)
In the Ramtops witches were accorded a status similar to that which other cultures gave to nuns, or tax collectors, or cesspit cleaners. That is to say, they were respected, sometimes admired, generally applauded for doing a job which logically had to be done, but people never felt quite comfortable in the same room with them. (ER)
... no one had a bad word to say about witches. At least, not if he wanted to wake up in the morning the same shape as he went to bed. (ER)
'If you can’t learn to ride an elephant, you can at least learn to ride a horse.’
‘What’s an elephant?’ ‘A kind of badger,’ said Granny. She hadn’t maintained forest-credibility for forty years by ever admitting ignorance. (ER) People had seen her turn into a screaming, green-skinned monster. They could respect a witch like that. Once you got respect, you’d got everything. (W)
She'd been a respectable young woman for some time. In certain people, that means there’s a lot of dammed-up disreputability just waiting to burst out. (TT)
... her clients had money, which was useful, but they also paid in respect, and that was a rock-hard currency. (ER)
The god currently gaining popularity was Om, who never answered prayers or manifested himself. It was easy to respect an invisible god. It was the ones that turned up everywhere, often drunk, that put people off. (SODW)
When all hope was gone, you called for Granny Weatherwax, because she was the best.
And she always came. Always. But popular? No. Need is not the same as like. (W) 'He’s a sergeant, and they don’t deserve no respect at all sir. I should know. They’re cunning and artful, if they’re any good. I wouldn’t mind if he was an officer, sir. But sergeants are clever.' (MR)
'Am I alone in thinking, by the way, that it doesn’t add to the status of the University to have an ape on the faculty?’
‘Yes,’ said Ridcully flatly. ‘You are. We’ve got the only librarian who can rip off your arm with his leg. People respect that.' (IT) They called themselves the Munrungs. It meant The People, or the True Human Beings. It's what most people call themselves, to begin with. And then one day the tribe meets some other people, and gives them a name like The Other People or, if it's not been a good day, The Enemy. If only they'd thing up a name like Some More True Human Beings, it'd save a lot of trouble later on. (CP)
'On my honour.’
‘On you honour as a drunken rowdy thief?’ said Tiffany. Rob Anybody beamed. ‘Aye!’ he said. ‘An’ I got a lot of good big reputation to protect there!' (WFM) |
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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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