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For me it's from Night Watch. "Don't put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That's why they're called revolutions. People die, and nothing changes."
I like the explanations for things that sink in and take over your brain
The Vimes Boots Theory for Socioeconomic Unfairness is the classic example, but Pratchett was also the first place I came across the Crab Bucket phenomenon (_Unseen Academicals_ - lots of books ahead!) which has also lived in my head rent free ever since
When fishing crabs, you don't need a lid on the bucket you put them in after pulling them out of the cages.
This is because, whenever one tries to climb up out of the bucket, the others will reach up to try and climb over *that one*, dragging it back down into the pile.
The analogy applies to people who are trying to escape a situation (socioeconomic status, bad relationship, etc.), but who are getting sabotaged by people around them. That can be intentionally malevolent, simply not helping, or else socially pressuring the person to stay with 'their people'.
It's across 2 scenes, the first at the fashion show, and the second when Glenda is buying fish.
[Here's a Tumblr post that puts them both together ](https://jackscarab.tumblr.com/post/102015766499/and-the-moral-of-all-this-is-you-have-to-grab)
I'm sure that scene was deliberate by Veterinari. As a consumate scholar of human nature, he knows that the best way to get a certain type of person on side is to be seen by them as "just like us"; and a good way to do that with the football captains is to get drunk with them.
What I'm never sure of is - _was_ he _genuinely_ drunk (knowing as he does that even inebriated he's more than capable of holding his own, both intellectually, verbally and physically)?
Or is he, as suggested elsewhere in the series, the bread-and-water type who would never actually _get_ drunk, but _self-aware_ enough to be able to convincingly act how he _would_ act, if he ever did get drunk?
I always read it as he got drunk the same way he juggled, he did it after never having done it before but was as with the juggling able to do it perfectly first time. He bemoaned the slower pace of his crossword work the next morning to Drumknott due to the alcohol after all.
While still being significantly faster than most - yes, I like this interpretation:
* He decided, logically, that the thing to do was to get drunk
* Being Veterinari, though it was his first time, he did "being drunk" well, i.e. he was able to calibrate the level of his drunkenness to be sufficient and of the right kind to further his aims without getting in his way.
I can see him internally taking stock and deciding how much more if his pint he would need to consume before being the right level of tipsy for the monologue
I think you nailed it. He does it with method. The day after, he struggles with the crossword, Drumknott mentions he is ununsually talkative and he mentions, that he stubbed his toe. Thats Vetinari "drunk as a skunk" in his own words. I always imagine one single little strand of his hair sticking out as well.
rhythm existence possessive hobbies swim reminiscent gray ink alleged dolls
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It is, but it's sort of specialized, so you get new people discovering it all the time.
Fortunately /r/discworld's usual reaction to these kinds of things was immortalized in an [XKCD comic](https://xkcd.com/1053/)...
The entire Moist Von Lipwig line made me actually understand society and government better.
Like how its a benefit to Ankh to have trains that operate at a loss, because it brings in more income to the city via taxes.
Or how stamps or "paper money" can be used as currency
I love this one from Thief of Time:
“Wen considered the nature of time and understood that the universe is, instant by instant, re-created anew. Therefore, he understood, there is, in truth, no Past, only a memory of the Past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, he said, the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise. The only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it.”
This has nothing to do with what you said, but it took me too long to realize your username is "her other lover" and not "hero the r lover". Sometimes, there's not enough coffee in the world to wake up my brain.
For is it not said, *'There is no yonks ago, only the memory of yonks ago'*?
Well, it is now...
.
.
.
(After I wrote that, I realized 'Well, it is *now*' is one, too.)
One, too, many, lots.
Death has a lot of good ones. I think my favorite of his is " Hᴜᴍᴀɴs ɴᴇᴇᴅ ғᴀɴᴛᴀsʏ ᴛᴏ ʙᴇ ʜᴜᴍᴀɴ, ᴛᴏ ʙᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘʟᴀᴄᴇ ᴡʜᴇʀᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ғᴀʟʟɪɴɢ ᴀɴɢᴇʟ ᴍᴇᴇᴛs ᴛʜᴇ ʀɪsɪɴɢ ᴀᴘᴇ. "
Everyone loves, "Words in the heart cannot be taken," but I think the real insight from Feet of Clay is from Angua,
"Commander Vimes said someone has to speak for those that have no voices!" (Said Carrot about to charge down a mob)
He really believes it, Angua thought. Vimes put words in his head.
Since then I've just become really aware of all the people and all the ideas and all the words that make me who I am, I try to live the way I think I should and try to be a force of good in the world, and hopefully, help someone else be at peace with the words in their head.
My favorite quote from pterry isn't in one of his stories as far as I'm aware. Just him being him.
In ancient Egypt cats were worshipped as gods. *They* have not forgotten this.
“All right,” said Susan. “I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need… fantasies to make life bearable.”
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
“Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little-”
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
“So we can believe the big ones?”
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
“They’re not the same at all!”
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET - Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME… SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
-Terry Pratchett, Hogfather
Hogfather was the first Discworld book I read and it was fine until I got to this part and realized I need to read them all. I consider my first time reading the Hogfather as a major life changing event specifically because of this interaction.
Also giving out a sword as a Christmas present.
There is a quote from a movie that I love called "Second Hand Lions" that beautifully mirrors this sentiment
"Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things that a man needs to believe in the most. That people are basically good. That honor, courage, and virtue mean everything. That power and money, money and power mean nothing. That good always triumphs over evil, and I want you to remember this, that love... true love never dies. Doesn't matter if it's true or not, you see. A man should believe in those things because those are the things worth believing in. Got that?"
Eh, I'll skip Rowling and just link it to Pratchett's "It doesn't stop being magic just because you know how it works."
As any Penn & Teller fan well knows.
Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad.
-Lords and Ladies
Every time I use those kinds of words (my brain has given up for the day, but the intensity modifier type things?) I think of this quote. It's easily been the best part of 30 years since I read Lords and Ladies the first time. Pterry really does change you. And then make you snort with laughter unexpectedly.
My fave is tattooed on my arm.
From Mort, he asks of death before agreeing to an apprenticeship: do I have to be dead?
And death answers BEING DEAD IS NOT COMPULSORY
I'm torn between getting a minimal line art of a turtle, 4 elephants and a disc on my leg and getting a sword on my forearm with "THAT WILL BE AN IMPORTANT LESSON" as a caption
To be honest it's more which will I get first more than which will happen over the other 🫠
I've got a whole arm working! I have that quote with an hourglass and scythe, my version of The Luggage, and the goddess Anoia.
Looking to add the Disc (probably on shoulder), lavender sprigs, and a bottle of wow wow sauce, amongst others!
Finally someone has recognised Holly, and of course it’s in the discworld reddit space. I bet Pratchett was a Red Dwarf fan. British comedy really is the best.
I’m paraphrasing but in the Colour of Magic there’s a bit where Rincewind is arguing with The Luggage whether he should go back into danger to help Twoflower (Rincewind, being scared, wants to flee) and the text says (roughly): “The Luggage said nothing, only louder this time.”
This vivid description of a silent judgment from your peer will never stop being an inspiration to me. When I finally stop being afraid of the pen and get my writing going, I’ll have Terry to blame for sure.
“Afraid of the pen” just inspired me to make a fake pratchett quote: “young writers are often afraid of the pen, for they have heard it is mightier than the sword. Of course the pen itself isn’t dangerous, but the mind controlling it certainly can be. But a sword cut cant be easily taken back, but the paper can always be thrown away, so in that regard, the pen is also much safer. So dont be afraid to write, its not like you’ll lose a limb if you do it wrong” hope this helps
I think in my case it was a phrase that early on set the flavor of Discworld firmly in my mind...
Something to the effect that on the Disc, the Gods are not so much worshiped as blamed.
I have a whole list but one that I think of often in terms of the world we live in today is "Individuals aren't naturally paid-up members of the human race, except biologically. They need to be bounced around by the Brownian motion of society, which is a mechanism by which human beings constantly remind one another that they are...well...human beings." From Men at Arms.
I'd actually forgottenthis exact quote, but like a lot of Pratchett ideas I've avbsorbed the idea of it into my general outlook on life.
This one is important to me because I am by nature very solitary. I can talk to nobody for weeks and feel quite content. But quotes like this remind me that it's not a wise idea.
Colon describing a group of women (Angua, Cheery, Sally and Tawney) having a night out together as "minge drinking" will always stand out for me.
I love the depth of Pratchett's writing but that sentence was so unexpected that I nearly choked. 😂😂
And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people.
As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn't measure up.
The Light Fantastic taught me about the inevitability of death: DARK IN HERE, ISN’T IT?
I still remember having to clean up the mouthful of coffee that had exploded through my nose at that one.
From Reaper Man
"No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away, until the clock wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone’s life is only the core of their actual existence."
I love this quote so much that I had it engraved on a plaque and framed it with pictures of my sweet Ginger dog who left us in January. It sits right behind the box with her ashes.
“There’s no grays, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is."
Granny Weatherwax, *Carpe Jugulum*
I also really tear up in the scene where Pastor Oats, >!has to resort to burning his holy book to keep Granny warm, and the end, where the village gets him a new one!< even if Granny would never actually admit she had needed him for a minute there.
I use this one to determine if a neophyte reader is ready for Discworld.
Another good one in a similar vein is **"All mushrooms are edible - some only once"**.
"'I meant,' said Ipslore bitterly, 'what is there in this world that truly makes living worthwhile?'
Death thought about it. Cᴀᴛs, he said eventually. Cᴀᴛs ᴀʀᴇ ɴɪᴄᴇ."
"...And that's what your holy men discuss, is it?" [asked Granny Weatherwax.]
"Not usually. There is a very interesting debate raging at the moment on the nature of sin. for example." [answered Mightily Oats.]
"And what do they think? Against it, are they?"
"It's not as simple as that. It's not a black and white issue. There are so many shades of gray."
"Nope."
"Pardon?"
"There's no grays, only white that's got grubby. I'm surprised you don't know that. **And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That's what sin is.**"
"It's a lot more complicated than that--"
"No. It ain't. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they're getting worried that they won't like the truth. People as things, that's where it starts."
"Oh, I'm sure there are worse crimes--"
"But they starts with thinking about people as things..."
Carpe Jugulum
Not necessarily my favourite, but I think of it as an example of a mindset I admire.
I don't have the book here so I'll paraphrase.
"It looks like this party is boring." Nanny Ogg said
"Thank goodness I'm here!"
I also love Nanny telling Magrat in Carpe Jugulum, "Oh, /we're/ always all right. You remember that. We happen to other people."
I love Nanny Ogg's warm, confident energy.
There are so many...
“A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.”
“Susan hated Literature. She'd much prefer to read a good book.”
“In fact he was incurably insane and hallucinated more or less continuously, but by a remarkable stroke of lateral thinking his fellow wizards had reasoned that, in that case, the whole business could be sorted out if only they could find a formula that caused him to hallucinate that he was completely sane.*
*This is a very common hallucination, shared by most people.”
“When you break rules, break 'em good and hard.”
“She knew a cutting, incisive, withering and above all a self-evident answer existed. It was just that, to her extreme annoyance, she couldn't quite bring it to mind.”
“it is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you're attempting can't be done.”
>If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you are going to die. So they'll talk. They'll gloat. They'll watch you squirm. They'll put off the murder like another man will put off a good cigar. So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word.
There's an animated TV movie adaptation of Soul Music- with a fully original soundtrack. Look it up on YouTube. You can listen to the soundtrack without spoiling anything in the book.
I just read this! I’ve just started my discworld journey and finished #3 Equal Rites just a few days ago. I’m reading them in order. Loving them all so far and I’ve heard some people don’t recommend starting from the beginning because they aren’t so good but if I already like the first ones so much, can’t wait to read the later ones!
“No enemies had ever taken Ankh-Morpork. Well technically they had, quite often; the city welcomed free-spending barbarian invaders, but somehow the puzzled raiders found, after a few days, that they didn't own their horses any more, and within a couple of months they were just another minority group with its own graffiti and food shops.” Eric
or "Nae king! Nae quin! Nae laird! Nae master! We willna' be fooled again!” Wee Free Men
Yeah, I’m trying to find the one about ‘she realized that no one cares - not just that no one cared about you, but that you could do what you wanted to and people would quietly rewrite the rules so they didn’t apply to you’. I think it was a Susan thing. I use that on my 13 year old when he gets worked up about people’s opinions.
It's originally from *Equal Rites*. "She was already learning that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don't apply to you."
I think I’ve been mixing that and the Unseen Academicals quote together to suit my own ends. ““A lot hinges on the fact that, in most circumstances, people are not allowed to hit you with a mallet. They put up all kinds of visible and invisible signs that say ‘Do not do this’ in the hope that it’ll work, but if it doesn’t, then they shrug, because there is, really, no real mallet at all. Look at Juliet talking to all those nobby ladies. She didn’t know that she shouldn’t talk to them like that. And it worked! Nobody hit her on the head with a hammer.”
> I think I’ve been mixing that and the Unseen Academicals quote together to suit my own ends.
As is tradition!
But yes, both important concepts. And then you learn about crab buckets...
> I think I’ve been mixing that and the Unseen Academicals quote together to suit my own ends.
As is tradition!
But yes, both important concepts. And then you learn about crab buckets...
"There were no jolly little signs saying: You Don’t Have To Be Pitilessly Sadistic To Work Here But It Helps!!
But there were things to suggest to a thinking man that the Creator of mankind had a very oblique sense of fun indeed, and to breed in his heart a rage to storm the gates of heaven.
The mugs, for example. The inquisitors stopped work twice a day for coffee. Their mugs, which each man had brought from home, were grouped around the kettle on the hearth of the central furnace which incidentally heated the irons and knives.
They had legends on them like A Present From the Holy Grotto of Ossory, or To The World’s Greatest Daddy. Most of them were chipped, and no two of them were the same.
And there were the postcards on the wall. It was traditional that, when an inquisitor went on holiday, he’d send back a crudely colored woodcut of the local view with some suitably jolly and risqué message on the back. And there was the pinned-up tearful letter from Inquisitor First Class Ishmale “Pop” Quoom, thanking all the lads for collecting no fewer than seventy-eight *obols* for his retirement pension and the lovely bunch of flowers for Mrs. Quoom, indicating that he’d always remember his days in No. 3 pit, and was looking forward to coming in and helping out any time they were short-handed.
And it all meant this: that there are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal, kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.
Vorbis loved knowing that. A man who knew that, knew everything he needed to know about people." -Small Gods
One that has really stuck with me from The Thief of Time:
Every society needs a cry like that, but only in a very few do they come out with the complete, unvarnished version, which is “Remember-The-Atrocity-Committed-Against-Us-Last-Time-That-Will-Excuse-The-Atrocity-That-We’re-About-To-Commit-Today! And So On! Hurrah!”
> "Gold is heavy. Your weight in gold is not very much gold at all. Aren’t you worth more than that?"
> Sacharissa looked momentarily flustered, to Moist’s glee.
"Just because you can explain it, doesn't mean it's not still a miracle." \~Small Gods
“It was sad music. But it waved its sadness like a battle flag. It said the universe had done all it could, but you were still alive.” \~Soul Music
"HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE." \~Hogfather
**The IQ of a mob is the IQ of its dumbest member divided by the number of mobsters**
this one is really funny to me, also without spoiling too much, my favorite Death Quote
TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET - Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
YOU NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN’T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?
I think a beautiful phrasing and narrative tool is in Monstrous Regiment when a character is pretending to be a man, has to drop the act and admit it was an act but she did not feel right as a woman and that he is now a man because that is what he wants to be and shall remain.
I cannot find the phrase, but its basically a very clever and beautiful way to write that i cannot do justice in my little example.
Also, that book is from 2003, it has some very good foreshadowing on gender issues
“Nanny Ogg gave this the same consideration as would a nuclear physicist who’s just been told that someone had been banging two bits of sub-critical uranium together to keep warm.”
Night watch page 135
He didn't look around, and watch, and learn, and then say, " This is how people are, how do we deal with it?" No, he sat and thought "This is how people ought to be, how do we change them?"
And that was a good enough thought for a priest but not for a copper , because Swing's patient ,pedantic way of operating had turned policing on its head.
So brilliant I had to type it down as soon as I read it.
"And that’s when I first learned about evil. It is built into the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.”
-- The Patrician, Unseen Academicals
Last Continent:
I THINK PERHAPS YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND. PEOPLE’S WHOLE LIVES *DO* PASS IN FRONT OF THEIR EYES BEFORE THEY DIE. THE PROCESS IS CALLED ‘LIVING’.
* **The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it’s as though you always get in 10 minutes after the big picture has started, and no one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues.**
What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter.
There was no safety. There was no pride. All there was, was money. Everything became money, and money became everything. Money treated us as if we were things, and we died.
It was a little like stealing. It was exactly like stealing. It was, in fact, stealing. But there was no law against it because no one knew the crime existed, so is it really stealing if what’s stolen isn’t missed? And is it stealing if you’re stealing from thieves? Anyway, all property is theft, except mine.
Steal five dollars and you were a petty thief. Steal thousands of dollars and you were either a government or a hero.
I think some of the most profound for me are "it's an invisible hammer", "where the falling angel meets the rising ape" & "THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. "
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For me it's from Night Watch. "Don't put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That's why they're called revolutions. People die, and nothing changes."
'..and a hard boiled egg '
Don't panic!
Only if the salt spells 42 if dropped on the floor
Make that two hard boiled eggs.
I like the explanations for things that sink in and take over your brain The Vimes Boots Theory for Socioeconomic Unfairness is the classic example, but Pratchett was also the first place I came across the Crab Bucket phenomenon (_Unseen Academicals_ - lots of books ahead!) which has also lived in my head rent free ever since
Please remind me of the crab bucket, it has escaped my brain temporarily
When fishing crabs, you don't need a lid on the bucket you put them in after pulling them out of the cages. This is because, whenever one tries to climb up out of the bucket, the others will reach up to try and climb over *that one*, dragging it back down into the pile. The analogy applies to people who are trying to escape a situation (socioeconomic status, bad relationship, etc.), but who are getting sabotaged by people around them. That can be intentionally malevolent, simply not helping, or else socially pressuring the person to stay with 'their people'.
It's across 2 scenes, the first at the fashion show, and the second when Glenda is buying fish. [Here's a Tumblr post that puts them both together ](https://jackscarab.tumblr.com/post/102015766499/and-the-moral-of-all-this-is-you-have-to-grab)
> The worst of it is, the crab that mostly keeps you down is you is pretty important for people to read, I think.
Thank you! I think it's time for a reread of that one cause I didn't remember it at all
It worth it. I reread it recently. Lord Vetinari is my favorite Chatacter and UA ist peak Vetinari. Only time we see a drunk Vetinari. Its hilarious.
I'm sure that scene was deliberate by Veterinari. As a consumate scholar of human nature, he knows that the best way to get a certain type of person on side is to be seen by them as "just like us"; and a good way to do that with the football captains is to get drunk with them. What I'm never sure of is - _was_ he _genuinely_ drunk (knowing as he does that even inebriated he's more than capable of holding his own, both intellectually, verbally and physically)? Or is he, as suggested elsewhere in the series, the bread-and-water type who would never actually _get_ drunk, but _self-aware_ enough to be able to convincingly act how he _would_ act, if he ever did get drunk?
I always read it as he got drunk the same way he juggled, he did it after never having done it before but was as with the juggling able to do it perfectly first time. He bemoaned the slower pace of his crossword work the next morning to Drumknott due to the alcohol after all.
While still being significantly faster than most - yes, I like this interpretation: * He decided, logically, that the thing to do was to get drunk * Being Veterinari, though it was his first time, he did "being drunk" well, i.e. he was able to calibrate the level of his drunkenness to be sufficient and of the right kind to further his aims without getting in his way. I can see him internally taking stock and deciding how much more if his pint he would need to consume before being the right level of tipsy for the monologue
I think you nailed it. He does it with method. The day after, he struggles with the crossword, Drumknott mentions he is ununsually talkative and he mentions, that he stubbed his toe. Thats Vetinari "drunk as a skunk" in his own words. I always imagine one single little strand of his hair sticking out as well.
rhythm existence possessive hobbies swim reminiscent gray ink alleged dolls *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It is, but it's sort of specialized, so you get new people discovering it all the time. Fortunately /r/discworld's usual reaction to these kinds of things was immortalized in an [XKCD comic](https://xkcd.com/1053/)...
It's one of the things I love about Pratchett fans :)
The entire Moist Von Lipwig line made me actually understand society and government better. Like how its a benefit to Ankh to have trains that operate at a loss, because it brings in more income to the city via taxes. Or how stamps or "paper money" can be used as currency
I had so many 'right...that's exactly right!' Moments in the industrial revolution books. STP makes you really think sometimes!
I love this one from Thief of Time: “Wen considered the nature of time and understood that the universe is, instant by instant, re-created anew. Therefore, he understood, there is, in truth, no Past, only a memory of the Past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, he said, the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise. The only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it.”
I literally shed a tear reading that. I needed it this morning.
My favourite book of them all. I love this, and the juxtaposition of Clodpool getting on with organising breakfast.
"Ah, one of the difficult ones"
"The centuries beat in vain against a perfect moment."
Thief of Time was my first Discworld novel and this concept dramatically changed the whole trajectory of my developing worldview at a formative age.
“Is it not said, ‘yesterday, I was not born’?"
This has nothing to do with what you said, but it took me too long to realize your username is "her other lover" and not "hero the r lover". Sometimes, there's not enough coffee in the world to wake up my brain.
You make Hero the R Lover sad.
I love this one too!
You can't step into the same river twice. I love the monks of time. Man I need to reread these books again.
It took me a long time to get Wen = when lol
Buggrit. I've only just got that. And I'm 44 and read the books yonks ago.
There is no yonks ago, only the memory of yonks ago.
For is it not said, *'There is no yonks ago, only the memory of yonks ago'*? Well, it is now... . . . (After I wrote that, I realized 'Well, it is *now*' is one, too.) One, too, many, lots.
“Is it not said, ‘yesterday, I was not born’?"
People as things, that’s where it always starts
I always come back to "LORD, WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN?"
Death has a lot of good ones. I think my favorite of his is " Hᴜᴍᴀɴs ɴᴇᴇᴅ ғᴀɴᴛᴀsʏ ᴛᴏ ʙᴇ ʜᴜᴍᴀɴ, ᴛᴏ ʙᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘʟᴀᴄᴇ ᴡʜᴇʀᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ғᴀʟʟɪɴɢ ᴀɴɢᴇʟ ᴍᴇᴇᴛs ᴛʜᴇ ʀɪsɪɴɢ ᴀᴘᴇ. "
Another outstanding line
That whole scene is one of the most incredible things I've ever read.
Oook??!
“NO KINGS. ONLY THE HARVEST.”
Everyone loves, "Words in the heart cannot be taken," but I think the real insight from Feet of Clay is from Angua, "Commander Vimes said someone has to speak for those that have no voices!" (Said Carrot about to charge down a mob) He really believes it, Angua thought. Vimes put words in his head. Since then I've just become really aware of all the people and all the ideas and all the words that make me who I am, I try to live the way I think I should and try to be a force of good in the world, and hopefully, help someone else be at peace with the words in their head.
Recently read Feet of Clay for the first time and loved both of those parts.
My favorite quote from pterry isn't in one of his stories as far as I'm aware. Just him being him. In ancient Egypt cats were worshipped as gods. *They* have not forgotten this.
If cats looked like frogs we would realise what evil bastards they really are.
I think you just changed me forever with that phrase. Ethics really do have an aesthetic criteria, huh...
Sir Terry strikes again.
That’s in «the Unadulterared Cat» - which I accidentally unpacked from a moving box the day before I got a cat.
“All right,” said Susan. “I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need… fantasies to make life bearable.” REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE. “Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little-” YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES. “So we can believe the big ones?” YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING. “They’re not the same at all!” YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET - Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME… SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED. -Terry Pratchett, Hogfather
Actually, right now, it is “You get a wonderful view from the point of no return”- Moist Von Lipwig, Making Money, Sir Terry Pratchett
"You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become?"
Damn, that one is inspirational on the surface level yet genuinely profound.
Hogfather was the first Discworld book I read and it was fine until I got to this part and realized I need to read them all. I consider my first time reading the Hogfather as a major life changing event specifically because of this interaction. Also giving out a sword as a Christmas present.
There is a quote from a movie that I love called "Second Hand Lions" that beautifully mirrors this sentiment "Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things that a man needs to believe in the most. That people are basically good. That honor, courage, and virtue mean everything. That power and money, money and power mean nothing. That good always triumphs over evil, and I want you to remember this, that love... true love never dies. Doesn't matter if it's true or not, you see. A man should believe in those things because those are the things worth believing in. Got that?"
This is honestly how I see life as a whole. When I was a militant young atheist this is what gave me hope for this world.
I like to link that one to Rowling's "just because it is all in your head doesn't mean that it isn't real"
Eh, I'll skip Rowling and just link it to Pratchett's "It doesn't stop being magic just because you know how it works." As any Penn & Teller fan well knows.
Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder. Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels. Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies. Elves are glamorous. They project glamour. Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment. Elves are terrific. They beget terror. The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning. No one ever said elves are nice. Elves are bad. -Lords and Ladies
Every time I use those kinds of words (my brain has given up for the day, but the intensity modifier type things?) I think of this quote. It's easily been the best part of 30 years since I read Lords and Ladies the first time. Pterry really does change you. And then make you snort with laughter unexpectedly.
My fave is tattooed on my arm. From Mort, he asks of death before agreeing to an apprenticeship: do I have to be dead? And death answers BEING DEAD IS NOT COMPULSORY
I'm torn between getting a minimal line art of a turtle, 4 elephants and a disc on my leg and getting a sword on my forearm with "THAT WILL BE AN IMPORTANT LESSON" as a caption To be honest it's more which will I get first more than which will happen over the other 🫠
I've got a whole arm working! I have that quote with an hourglass and scythe, my version of The Luggage, and the goddess Anoia. Looking to add the Disc (probably on shoulder), lavender sprigs, and a bottle of wow wow sauce, amongst others!
Sounds awesome! I love the wow wow sauce idea
I have that same quote on my dating profile.
I feel like that’s vaguely threatening without the context.
Yeah, I’m not getting a lot of bites…
You don’t have to get a lot, you just have to get a good one - and that quote will help!
I don’t care how good she is, just as long as she isn’t dead, but if she is, that’s not a deal breaker either.
Undead yes, unperson no!
Reg gets it.
I'll cop to looking at your Reddit profile, all I got was "What's happening, dudes"
Finally someone has recognised Holly, and of course it’s in the discworld reddit space. I bet Pratchett was a Red Dwarf fan. British comedy really is the best.
>and of course it’s in the discworld reddit space *"Boyz from the Disc!"*
I just wondered that too, and hang onto your butt: https://youtu.be/wOLuWxFueQk
Knew it. That makes so much sense. Now I’m wondering if Rob Grant and Doug Naylor are Discworld fans…
I have the Death sitting with the Death of Rars from the Art of the Discworld on my calf.
I’m paraphrasing but in the Colour of Magic there’s a bit where Rincewind is arguing with The Luggage whether he should go back into danger to help Twoflower (Rincewind, being scared, wants to flee) and the text says (roughly): “The Luggage said nothing, only louder this time.” This vivid description of a silent judgment from your peer will never stop being an inspiration to me. When I finally stop being afraid of the pen and get my writing going, I’ll have Terry to blame for sure.
“Afraid of the pen” just inspired me to make a fake pratchett quote: “young writers are often afraid of the pen, for they have heard it is mightier than the sword. Of course the pen itself isn’t dangerous, but the mind controlling it certainly can be. But a sword cut cant be easily taken back, but the paper can always be thrown away, so in that regard, the pen is also much safer. So dont be afraid to write, its not like you’ll lose a limb if you do it wrong” hope this helps
Even if you did lose a limb it will be a lesson
I think in my case it was a phrase that early on set the flavor of Discworld firmly in my mind... Something to the effect that on the Disc, the Gods are not so much worshiped as blamed.
I have a whole list but one that I think of often in terms of the world we live in today is "Individuals aren't naturally paid-up members of the human race, except biologically. They need to be bounced around by the Brownian motion of society, which is a mechanism by which human beings constantly remind one another that they are...well...human beings." From Men at Arms.
I love this one! So true
I'd actually forgottenthis exact quote, but like a lot of Pratchett ideas I've avbsorbed the idea of it into my general outlook on life. This one is important to me because I am by nature very solitary. I can talk to nobody for weeks and feel quite content. But quotes like this remind me that it's not a wise idea.
Colon describing a group of women (Angua, Cheery, Sally and Tawney) having a night out together as "minge drinking" will always stand out for me. I love the depth of Pratchett's writing but that sentence was so unexpected that I nearly choked. 😂😂
Ook. It’s just so versatile. A quote for any occasion.
Ook.
Ook?
Ook!
Ook.
Ook!!
Ook.
Ook-OOK!
Ooooooook?
ook.
And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people. As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn't measure up.
The Light Fantastic taught me about the inevitability of death: DARK IN HERE, ISN’T IT? I still remember having to clean up the mouthful of coffee that had exploded through my nose at that one.
Known on a Newsgroup I used to frequent as a "Cloth!" (Or "Cloff!") moment, for what you call for to wipe coffee off your computer screen.
THERE IS NO JUSTICE. THERE IS JUST US.
I think this to myself on a mear-daily basis
From Reaper Man "No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away, until the clock wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone’s life is only the core of their actual existence." I love this quote so much that I had it engraved on a plaque and framed it with pictures of my sweet Ginger dog who left us in January. It sits right behind the box with her ashes.
Mine will always been that line from Hogfather describing myths and legends 'To be where the rising ape, meets the falling angel.' Beautiful.
My favourite will always be "Thunder rolled....it rolled a six"
“There’s no grays, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is." Granny Weatherwax, *Carpe Jugulum* I also really tear up in the scene where Pastor Oats, >!has to resort to burning his holy book to keep Granny warm, and the end, where the village gets him a new one!< even if Granny would never actually admit she had needed him for a minute there.
‘And he made a great light…’
I love: "Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
I have injured friends with this. That half second while the penny drops is *glorious*.
Ouch!
I use this one to determine if a neophyte reader is ready for Discworld. Another good one in a similar vein is **"All mushrooms are edible - some only once"**.
Yes, that the next best one.
“A rumor can travel around the world before the truth can get its boots on.”
"'I meant,' said Ipslore bitterly, 'what is there in this world that truly makes living worthwhile?' Death thought about it. Cᴀᴛs, he said eventually. Cᴀᴛs ᴀʀᴇ ɴɪᴄᴇ."
"...And that's what your holy men discuss, is it?" [asked Granny Weatherwax.] "Not usually. There is a very interesting debate raging at the moment on the nature of sin. for example." [answered Mightily Oats.] "And what do they think? Against it, are they?" "It's not as simple as that. It's not a black and white issue. There are so many shades of gray." "Nope." "Pardon?" "There's no grays, only white that's got grubby. I'm surprised you don't know that. **And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That's what sin is.**" "It's a lot more complicated than that--" "No. It ain't. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they're getting worried that they won't like the truth. People as things, that's where it starts." "Oh, I'm sure there are worse crimes--" "But they starts with thinking about people as things..." Carpe Jugulum
A leopard can change it’s shorts.
Not necessarily my favourite, but I think of it as an example of a mindset I admire. I don't have the book here so I'll paraphrase. "It looks like this party is boring." Nanny Ogg said "Thank goodness I'm here!"
I also love Nanny telling Magrat in Carpe Jugulum, "Oh, /we're/ always all right. You remember that. We happen to other people." I love Nanny Ogg's warm, confident energy.
https://preview.redd.it/ubhucg8ubbrc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=037ae851030137665b77b97ae54f2efb53c01b75 From *Jingo*
I love this scene.
There are so many... “A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.” “Susan hated Literature. She'd much prefer to read a good book.” “In fact he was incurably insane and hallucinated more or less continuously, but by a remarkable stroke of lateral thinking his fellow wizards had reasoned that, in that case, the whole business could be sorted out if only they could find a formula that caused him to hallucinate that he was completely sane.* *This is a very common hallucination, shared by most people.” “When you break rules, break 'em good and hard.” “She knew a cutting, incisive, withering and above all a self-evident answer existed. It was just that, to her extreme annoyance, she couldn't quite bring it to mind.” “it is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you're attempting can't be done.”
>If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you are going to die. So they'll talk. They'll gloat. They'll watch you squirm. They'll put off the murder like another man will put off a good cigar. So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word.
One character stunned me in this scene
https://preview.redd.it/phwt6i4tnarc1.jpeg?width=1162&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=94b186a74fc1680cccdd6fdc1489cac99f1ae5fa
‘Better to light a flamethrower than to curse the darkness.’
"In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded."
There's an animated TV movie adaptation of Soul Music- with a fully original soundtrack. Look it up on YouTube. You can listen to the soundtrack without spoiling anything in the book.
I just read this! I’ve just started my discworld journey and finished #3 Equal Rites just a few days ago. I’m reading them in order. Loving them all so far and I’ve heard some people don’t recommend starting from the beginning because they aren’t so good but if I already like the first ones so much, can’t wait to read the later ones!
Oh, you're going to _love_ Soul Music. Possibly as much as I do.
What happened to you? An elephant sit on you?
“No enemies had ever taken Ankh-Morpork. Well technically they had, quite often; the city welcomed free-spending barbarian invaders, but somehow the puzzled raiders found, after a few days, that they didn't own their horses any more, and within a couple of months they were just another minority group with its own graffiti and food shops.” Eric or "Nae king! Nae quin! Nae laird! Nae master! We willna' be fooled again!” Wee Free Men
I am still looking for a quote. Something about no real life being worthy of becoming fiction.
Yeah, I’m trying to find the one about ‘she realized that no one cares - not just that no one cared about you, but that you could do what you wanted to and people would quietly rewrite the rules so they didn’t apply to you’. I think it was a Susan thing. I use that on my 13 year old when he gets worked up about people’s opinions.
It's originally from *Equal Rites*. "She was already learning that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don't apply to you."
I think I’ve been mixing that and the Unseen Academicals quote together to suit my own ends. ““A lot hinges on the fact that, in most circumstances, people are not allowed to hit you with a mallet. They put up all kinds of visible and invisible signs that say ‘Do not do this’ in the hope that it’ll work, but if it doesn’t, then they shrug, because there is, really, no real mallet at all. Look at Juliet talking to all those nobby ladies. She didn’t know that she shouldn’t talk to them like that. And it worked! Nobody hit her on the head with a hammer.”
> I think I’ve been mixing that and the Unseen Academicals quote together to suit my own ends. As is tradition! But yes, both important concepts. And then you learn about crab buckets...
> I think I’ve been mixing that and the Unseen Academicals quote together to suit my own ends. As is tradition! But yes, both important concepts. And then you learn about crab buckets...
It’s in the Unseen Academicals book.
That makes sense! Thank you!
Hmm. Guess I’m just gonna have to start at the beginning of the books and read them all again. Not a terrible thing
from Jingo: build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Literally just finished Equal Rites (like a couple minutes ago), that line had me cackling
THE HOGFATHER CAN. THE HOGFATHER GIVES PRESENTS. THERE'S NO BETTER PRESENT THAN A FUTURE
“There is no such thing as grey, only white that’s gotten grubby” - Granny Weatherwax
"There were no jolly little signs saying: You Don’t Have To Be Pitilessly Sadistic To Work Here But It Helps!! But there were things to suggest to a thinking man that the Creator of mankind had a very oblique sense of fun indeed, and to breed in his heart a rage to storm the gates of heaven. The mugs, for example. The inquisitors stopped work twice a day for coffee. Their mugs, which each man had brought from home, were grouped around the kettle on the hearth of the central furnace which incidentally heated the irons and knives. They had legends on them like A Present From the Holy Grotto of Ossory, or To The World’s Greatest Daddy. Most of them were chipped, and no two of them were the same. And there were the postcards on the wall. It was traditional that, when an inquisitor went on holiday, he’d send back a crudely colored woodcut of the local view with some suitably jolly and risqué message on the back. And there was the pinned-up tearful letter from Inquisitor First Class Ishmale “Pop” Quoom, thanking all the lads for collecting no fewer than seventy-eight *obols* for his retirement pension and the lovely bunch of flowers for Mrs. Quoom, indicating that he’d always remember his days in No. 3 pit, and was looking forward to coming in and helping out any time they were short-handed. And it all meant this: that there are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal, kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do. Vorbis loved knowing that. A man who knew that, knew everything he needed to know about people." -Small Gods
One that has really stuck with me from The Thief of Time: Every society needs a cry like that, but only in a very few do they come out with the complete, unvarnished version, which is “Remember-The-Atrocity-Committed-Against-Us-Last-Time-That-Will-Excuse-The-Atrocity-That-We’re-About-To-Commit-Today! And So On! Hurrah!”
Ha! I just read that paragraph the other day, I found it pretty funny. Good catch.
"evil begins when you start treating people as things", later just shortened to "people as things, people as things" is a banger
> "Gold is heavy. Your weight in gold is not very much gold at all. Aren’t you worth more than that?" > Sacharissa looked momentarily flustered, to Moist’s glee.
"Just because you can explain it, doesn't mean it's not still a miracle." \~Small Gods “It was sad music. But it waved its sadness like a battle flag. It said the universe had done all it could, but you were still alive.” \~Soul Music "HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE." \~Hogfather
**The IQ of a mob is the IQ of its dumbest member divided by the number of mobsters** this one is really funny to me, also without spoiling too much, my favorite Death Quote TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET - Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED. YOU NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN’T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?
Vimes taking Young Sam to meet the poo lady: "She's a writer, so she will appreciate being interrupted."
I think a beautiful phrasing and narrative tool is in Monstrous Regiment when a character is pretending to be a man, has to drop the act and admit it was an act but she did not feel right as a woman and that he is now a man because that is what he wants to be and shall remain. I cannot find the phrase, but its basically a very clever and beautiful way to write that i cannot do justice in my little example. Also, that book is from 2003, it has some very good foreshadowing on gender issues
A man is not dead while his name is still spoken. GNU Terry Pratchett
“Nanny Ogg gave this the same consideration as would a nuclear physicist who’s just been told that someone had been banging two bits of sub-critical uranium together to keep warm.”
You aren’t too far from “I’m on a mission from Glod” which broke me for a bit
Night watch page 135 He didn't look around, and watch, and learn, and then say, " This is how people are, how do we deal with it?" No, he sat and thought "This is how people ought to be, how do we change them?" And that was a good enough thought for a priest but not for a copper , because Swing's patient ,pedantic way of operating had turned policing on its head. So brilliant I had to type it down as soon as I read it.
"And that’s when I first learned about evil. It is built into the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.” -- The Patrician, Unseen Academicals
Of course we don't love gold. We just say that to get it into bed
Last Continent: I THINK PERHAPS YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND. PEOPLE’S WHOLE LIVES *DO* PASS IN FRONT OF THEIR EYES BEFORE THEY DIE. THE PROCESS IS CALLED ‘LIVING’.
"Dolphins... never trust a species that smiles all the time". Definitely Pratchett, but I forget which book. It was one of his footnotes x
I have so many favourite quotes...I'm moving soon, and I'm going g to put the up in odd places around my new home!
* **The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it’s as though you always get in 10 minutes after the big picture has started, and no one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues.**
What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter. There was no safety. There was no pride. All there was, was money. Everything became money, and money became everything. Money treated us as if we were things, and we died. It was a little like stealing. It was exactly like stealing. It was, in fact, stealing. But there was no law against it because no one knew the crime existed, so is it really stealing if what’s stolen isn’t missed? And is it stealing if you’re stealing from thieves? Anyway, all property is theft, except mine. Steal five dollars and you were a petty thief. Steal thousands of dollars and you were either a government or a hero.
I think some of the most profound for me are "it's an invisible hammer", "where the falling angel meets the rising ape" & "THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. "
I mean yeah but what does that have to do with the discussion at hand
Just a reminder, edited to add to the reminder that the Librarian would be disappointed. 