The thing about stories is that you have to pick the ones that last. (AM)
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'We all know what happens when a mysterious orphan turns up and challenges someone big and powerful, don’t we?
It’s like being the third and youngest son of a king. He can’t help but win!' She looked triumphantly at the crowd. But the crowd looked doubtful. They hadn’t read as many stories as Malicia, and were rather attached to the experience of real life, which is that when someone small and righteous takes on someone big and nasty he is grilled bread product, very quickly. (AM) They'd saved the city with gold more easily, at that point, than any hero could have managed with steel. But in truth it had not exactly been gold, or even the promise of gold, but more like the fantasy of gold, the fairy dream that the gold is there, at the end of the rainbow, and will continue to be there for ever provided, naturally, that you don’t go and look.
This is known as Finance. (GP) 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)
'General Tacticus said the fate of a battle may depend upon the actions of one man in the right place, sergeant,’ said Blouse calmly.
‘And having a lot more soldiers than the other bugger, sir,’ Jackrum insisted. (MR) He was trying to find some help in the ancient military journals of General Tacticus, whose intelligent campaigning had been so successful that he’d lent his very name to the detailed prosecution of martial endeavour, and had actually found a section headed What to Do If One Army Occupies a Well-fortified and Superior Ground and the Other Does Not, but since the first sentence read ‘Endeavour to be the one inside’ he’d rather lost heart. (CJ)
'A good plan isn’t one where someone wins, it’s where nobody thinks they’ve lost.' (AM)
It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good, or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people. (GO)
It is in the nature of things that those who save the world from certain destruction often don’t get hugely rewarded because, since the certain destruction does not take place, people are uncertain how certain it may have been and are, therefore, somewhat tight when it comes to handing out anything more substantial than praise. (LH)
Cohen's father had taken him to a mountain top, when he was no more than a lad, and explained to him the hero’s creed and told him that there was no greater joy than to die in battle.
Cohen had seen the flaw in this straight away, and a lifetime’s experience had reinforced his belief that in fact a greater joy was to kill the other bugger in battle and end up sitting on a heap of gold higher than your horse. (IT) Even with nougat, you can have a perfect moment. (TOT)
'You gotta dance, boss. You can think and you can fight, but the world’s always movin’, and if you wanna stay ahead you gotta dance.' (AM)
'When seven men go out to fight an army100,000 times bigger there’s only one way it can end,’ said Twoflower.
‘Right. I’m glad you see sense.’ ‘They’ll win,’ said Twoflower. ‘They’ve got to. Otherwise the world’s just not working properly.' (IT) 'Winners never talk about glorious victories. That’s because they’re the ones who see what the battlefield looks like afterwards. It’s only the losers who have glorious victories.' (SG)
‘What’s so hard about pulling a sword out of a stone? The real work’s already been done. You ought to make yourself useful and find the man who put the sword in the stone in the first place, eh?’ (MA)
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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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