bbce618
|
The trouble is you can shut your eyes but you can't shut your mind.
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terry-pratchett
philosophy
wintersmith
|
Terry Pratchett |
61f055f
|
"I know it's not thematically in tune with my new job and all, but I find it effective. Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day," I say. "But set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life. Tao of Pratchett. I live by it."
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terry-pratchett
harry-dresden
|
Jim Butcher |
ddedfab
|
"Commander, I always used to consider that you had a definite anti-authoritarian streak in you." "Sir?" "It seems that you have managed to retain this even though you are authority." "Sir?" "That's practically zen." --
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terry-pratchett
feet-of-clay
prachett
sam-vimes
zen
samuel-vimes
|
Terry Pratchett |
4eb59b6
|
Why are we talking about this good and evil? They're just names for sides. We know that.
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|
good
terry-pratchett
good-omens
neil-gaiman
|
Neil Gaiman |
8f772ac
|
I should have learned this, she thought. I wanted to learn fire, and pain, but I should have learned people.
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|
terry-pratchett
witches
life
truth
inspirational
tiffany-aching
|
Terry Pratchett |
7f02aee
|
At such times the universe gets a little closer to us. They are strange times, times of beginnings and endings. Dangerous and powerful. And we feel it even if we don't know what it is. These times are not necessarily good, and not necessarily bad. In fact, what they are depends on what *we* are.
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|
terry-pratchett
witches
life
truth
inspirational
tiffany-aching
|
Terry Pratchett |
4b5ccce
|
Poets have tried to describe Ankh-Morpork. They have failed. Perhaps it's the sheer zestful vitality of the place, or maybe it's just that a city with a million inhabitants and no sewers is rather robust for poets, who prefer daffodils and no wonder. So let's just say that Ankh-Morpork is as full of life as an old cheese on a hot day, as loud as a curse in a cathedral, as bright as an oil slick, as colourful as a bruise and as full of activity, industry, bustle and sheer exuberant busyness as a dead dog on a termite mound.
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|
terry-pratchett
mort
|
Terry Pratchett |
2cb45cb
|
It was nice to hear the voices of little children at play, provided you took care to be far enough away not to hear what they were actually saying.
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|
terry-pratchett
humor
hogfather
|
Terry Pratchett |
28ac45e
|
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.
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|
money
terry-pratchett
greed
life
philosophy-religion
going-postal
|
Terry Pratchett |
fc82d55
|
Have - have you got an appointment?' he said. 'I don't know,' said Carrot. 'Have we got an appointment?' 'I've got an iron ball with spikes on,' Nobby volunteered. 'That's a morningstar, Nobby.' 'Is it?' 'Yes,' said Carrot. 'An appointment is an engagement to see someone, while a morningstar is a large lump of metal used for viciously crushing skulls. It is important not to confuse the two, isn't it, Mr-?' He raised his eyebrows. 'Boffo, sir. But-' 'So if you could perhaps run along and tell Dr Whiteface we're here with an iron ball with spi- What am I saying? I mean, without an appointment to see him? Please? Thank you.
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|
terry-pratchett
carrot-ironfoundersson
corporal-carrot
men-at-arms
pratchett
discworld
|
Terry Pratchett |
a18376a
|
Who knew what evil lurked in the hearts of men? A copper, that's who. (...)You saw how close men lived to the beast. You realized that people like Carcer were not mad. They were incredibily sane. They were simply men without a shield. They'd looked at the world and realized that all the rules didn't have to apply to them, not if they didn't want them to. They weren't fooled by all the little stories. They shook hands with the beast.
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terry-pratchett
inspirational
night-watch
life-philosophy
|
Terry Pratchett |
0cd3fa4
|
Now that's what I call magic--seein' all that, dealin' with all that, and still goin' on. It's sittin' up all night with some poor old man who's leavin' the world, taking away such pain as you can, comfortin' their terror, seein' 'em safely on their way...and then cleanin' 'em up, layin' 'em out, making 'em neat for the funeral, and helpin' the weeping widow strip the bed and wash the sheets--which is, let me tell you, no errand for the fainthearted--and stayin' up the next night to watch over the coffin before the funeral, and then going home and sitting down for five minutes before some shouting angry man comes bangin' on your door 'cuz his wife's havin' difficulty givin' birth to their first child and the midwife's at her wits' end and then getting up and fetching your bag and going out again...We all do that, in our own way, and she does it better'n me, if I was to put my hand on my heart. That is the root and heart and soul and center of witchcraft, that is. The soul and center!
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|
terry-pratchett
granny-weatherwax
|
Terry Pratchett |
cf1cb11
|
It wasn't by eliminating the impossible that you got at the truth, however improbable; it was by the much harder process of eliminating the possibilities. You worked away, patiently asking questions and looking hard at things. You walked and talked, and in your heart you just hoped like hell that some bugger's nerve'd crack and he'd give himself up.
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|
terry-pratchett
vimes
pratchett
feet-of-clay
sam-vimes
|
Terry Pratchett |
c6159d4
|
Some police forces would believe anything. Not the Metropolitan police, though. The Met was the hardest, most cynically pragmatic, most stubbornly down-to-earth police force in Britain. It would take a lot to faze a copper from the Met. It would take, for example, a huge, battered car that was nothing more nor less than a fireball, a blazing, roaring, twisted metal lemon from Hell, driven by a grinning lunatic in sunglasses, sitting amid the flames, trailing thick black smoke, coming straight at them through the lashing rain and wind at eighty miles an hour. That would do it every time.
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|
terry-pratchett
humor
good-omens
neil-gaiman
|
Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett |
e89bcc1
|
"I assure you I will not kill you," said Inigo. "I know that," said Vimes. "But will you try?"
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|
terry-pratchett
sam-vimes
|
Terry Pratchett |
ef4e375
|
Wolves hate werewolves.' 'What? That can't be right! When she's wolf-shaped she's just like a wolf!' 'So? When she's human-shaped she's just like a human. And what's that got to do with anything? Humans don't like werewolves. Wolves don't like werewolves. People don't like wolves that can think like people, an' people don't like people who can act like wolves. Which just goes to show that people are the same everywhere.' said Gaspode. He assessed this sentence and added, 'Even when they're wolves.
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|
terry-pratchett
gaspode
pratchett
wolves
werewolves
|
Terry Pratchett |
5b9d76d
|
Them as can do, has to do for them as can't. And someone has to speak up for them as has no voices.
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|
terry-pratchett
inspirational
wee-free-men
kindness-to-animals
|
Terry Pratchett |
4ba9b2b
|
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.
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|
terry-pratchett
the-bursar
the-truth
|
Terry Pratchett |
e0ea08c
|
There are things so horrible that even the dark is afraid of them. Most people don't know this and this is just as well because the world could not really operate if everyone stayed in bed with the blankets over their head, which is what would happen if people knew what horrors lay a shadow's width away.
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|
dark
terry-pratchett
equal-rites
horror
discworld
|
Terry Pratchett |
5197623
|
The Empire's got something worse than whips all right. It's got obedience. Whips in the soul. They obey anyone who tells them what to do. Freedom just means being told what to do by someone different.
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|
terry-pratchett
|
Terry Pratchett |
51bb6dd
|
Newton Pulsifer had never...as far as he knew, ever believed in anything. It had been embarrassing, because he quite wanted to believe in something, since he recognized that belief was the lifebelt that got most people through the choppy waters of Life. He'd have liked to believe in a supreme God, although he'd have preferred a half-hour's chat with Him before committing himself, to clear up one or two points. He'd sat in all sorts of churches, waiting for that single flash of blue light, and it hadn't come. And then he'd tried to become an official Atheist and hadn't got the rock-hard, self-satisfied strength of belief even for that. And every single political party had seemed to him equally dishonest. .... Then he'd tried believing in the Universe, which seemed sound enough until he'd innocently started reading new books with words like Chaos and Time and Quantum in the titles. He'd found that even the people whose job of work was, so to speak, the Universe, didn't really believe in it and were actually quite proud of not knowing what it really was or even if it could theoretically exist. To Newt's straightforward mind this was intolerable.
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|
terry-pratchett
religion
neil-gaiman
|
Neil Gaiman |
b1b0940
|
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.
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|
terry-pratchett
law
|
Terry Pratchett |
79f7c5b
|
We are as gods to beasts of the field. We order the time of their birth and the time of their death. Between times, we have a duty.
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|
terry-pratchett
kindness-to-animals
|
Terry Pratchett |
1846dc7
|
"Shut up sergeant. You're a free troll. That's an order" Sam Vimes"
|
|
terry-pratchett
the-fifth-elephant
|
Terry Pratchett |
6ae99e7
|
That --ing zombie is going to end up on the end of a couple of --ing handy and versatile kebab skewers,' said Mr Tulip. 'An' then I'm gonna put an edge on this --ing spatula. An' then... then I'm gonna get medieval on his arse.' There were more pressing problems, but this one intrigued Mr Pin. 'How, exactly?' he said. 'I thought maybe a maypole,' said Mr Tulip reflectively. 'An' then a display of country dancing, land tillage under the three-filed system, several plagues and, if my --ing hand ain't too tired, the invention of the --ing horse collar.
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|
terry-pratchett
mr-pin
mr-tulip
the-truth
pratchett
|
Terry Pratchett |
c82dec9
|
But too much reading had taken its toll. William found that he now thought of prayer as a sophisticated way of pleading with thunderstorms.
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|
terry-pratchett
the-truth
william-de-worde
pratchett
|
Terry Pratchett |
1d35697
|
That just goes to show that you never know, although what it is we never know I suspect we'll never know.
|
|
terry-pratchett
vimes
|
Terry Pratchett |
e1a7ea5
|
Are you staying with us? It could be dangerous,' said William, realizing that he was saying this to a vampire iconographer who undied every time he took a picture.
|
|
terry-pratchett
otto-chriek
william-de-worde
pratchett
|
Terry Pratchett |
e21debc
|
You can't be loony and rich. You've got to be eccentric if you're rich.
|
|
terry-pratchett
|
Terry Pratchett |
c1eff00
|
Anger was a weapon to be honed and treasured and used only at the moment yielding most premium.
|
|
terry-pratchett
weapons
|
Terry Pratchett |
093ee83
|
These were dangerous thoughts, he knew. They were the kind that crept up on a Watchman when the chase was over and it was just you and him, facing one another in that breathless little pinch between the crime and the punishment. And maybe a Watchman had seen civilization with the skin ripped off one time too many and stopped acting like a Watchman and started acting like a normal human being and realized that the click of the crossbow or the sweep of the sword would make all the world so clean. And you couldn't think like that, even about vampires. Even though they'd take the lives of other people because little lives don't matter and what the hell can we take away from them? And, too, you couldn't think like that because they gave you a sword and a badge and that turned you into something else and that had to mean there were some thoughts you couldn't think. Only crimes could take place in darkness. Punishment had to be done in the light. That was the job of a good Watchman, Carrot always said. To light a candle in the dark.
|
|
light
terry-pratchett
punishment
|
Terry Pratchett |
d9405bf
|
...but William felt in his bones that you couldn't run a city on the basis of what the Watch liked. The Watch would probably like it if everyone spent their time indoors, with their hands on the table where people could see them.
|
|
terry-pratchett
the-truth
the-city-watch
william-de-worde
pratchett
|
Terry Pratchett |
fb58198
|
We (people) only remembered that elves sang. But we forgot what they sang about.
|
|
terry-pratchett
humor
lords-and-ladies
parody
|
Terry Pratchett |
e164143
|
I've stolen books. They're the only thing worth taking that don't belong to you.
|
|
terry-pratchett
fantasy
sword-and-sorcery
bookshops
dragons
|
Sully Tarnish |
12802ff
|
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 ...
|
|
terry-pratchett
religion
small-gods
belief
discworld
|
Terry Pratchett |
d0d3925
|
A los que Crowley no podia soportar era a esos que se llamaban a si mismos satanicos. No solo por lo que hacian, sino por la mania que tenian de achacarselo todo al Infierno. Se les ocurria alguna idea vomitiva que no se le pasaria a un demonio por la cabeza ni en un millon de anos, alguna atrocidad oscura y descerebrada que solo una mente humana hecha y derecha podria concebir, y luego gritaban: <>, y se quedaban con los jueces cuando lo cierto es que el Diablo nunca empujaba a nadie a nada. No le hacia falta. Y eso a los humanos les costaba entenderlo. El Infierno no era ningun gran deposito de mal, no mas de lo que, segun Crowley, el Cielo era una fuente de bien; eran solo bandos en una gran partida cosmica de ajedrez. Y era en la mente humana donde se hallaba la verdadera fuente de la bondad verdadera y de la verdadera maldad de infarto.
|
|
spanish
terry-pratchett
crowley
good-omens
neil-gaiman
|
Terry Pratchett |
0779950
|
Crecemos leyendo cosas de piratas, de vaqueros, de naves espaciales y cosas asi, y cuando te crees que el mundo esta lleno de todo eso, van y te dicen que en verdad son todo ballenas muertas, bosques talados y residuos nucleares por ahi sueltos durante un millon de anos. Pues para eso no vale la pena crecer, mira tu por donde.
|
|
spanish
terry-pratchett
good-omens
neil-gaiman
español
|
Terry Pratchett |
14ac01f
|
Para comprender el estado de la humanidad puede que baste con saber que la mayoria de los grandes triunfos y grandes catastrofes de la historia no se deben a que las personas son buenas en esencia o malas en esencia, sino a que las personas son en esencia personas.
|
|
spanish
terry-pratchett
good-omens
neil-gaiman
español
|
Terry Pratchett |