"Progress just means bad things happen faster."

"You're not going to tell me they built fifty-foot-high killer golems, are you?"Only a man would think of that.It's our job," said Moist. "If you don't think of fifty-foot-high killer golems first, someone else will."

"Luck came to those who left a space for it."

"Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or derring-do. Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth. But the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer to achieve immortality by not dying."

"Rincewind could scream for mercy in nineteen languages, and just scream in another forty-four."

"Vimes had once discussed the Ephebian idea of 'democracy' with Carrot, and had been rather interested in the idea that everyone had a vote until he found out that while he, Vimes, would have a vote, there was no way in the rules that anyone could prevent Nobby Nobbs from having one as well. Vimes could see the flaw there straight away."

"The games we play are lessons we learn. The assumptions we make, things we ignore, and things we change make us what we become."

"It's daft, locking us up," said Nanny. "I'd have had us killed."That's because you're basically good," said Magrat. "The good are innocent and create justice. The bad are guilty, which is why they invent mercy."

"YOU'RE ONLY PUTTING OFF THE INEVITABLE, he said.That's what being alive is all about."

"If words had weight, a single sentence from Death would have anchored a ship."

"Is somethin' wrong?" said Daft Wullie."Aye!" snapped the kelda. "Rob willnae tak' a drink o' Special Sheep Liniment!"Wullie's little face screwed up in instant grief."Ach, the Big Man's deid!" he sobbed. "Oh waily waily waily - "Will ye hush yer gob, ye big mudlin!" shouted Rob Anybody, standing up. "I am no' deid! I'm trying to have a moment o' existential dreed here, right? Crivens, it's a puir lookout if a man cannae feel the chilly winds o' Fate lashing aroound his nethers wi'out folks telling him he's deid, eh?"

"This book was written using 100% recycled words."

"Using a metaphor in front of a man as unimaginative as Ridcully was like ared flag to a bu... was like putting something very annoying in front ofsomeone who was annoyed by it."

"Heaven has no taste."Now-"And not one single sushi restaurant."A look of pain crossed the angel's suddenly very serious face."

"Modesty is only arrogance by stealth."

"The consensus seemed to be that if really large numbers of men were sent to storm the mountain, then enough might survive the rocks to take the citadel. This is essentially the basis of all military thinking."

"Living this long's not as wonderful as people think. I mean, you get the same amount of youth as everyone else, but a great big extra helping of being very old and deaf and creaky."

"Belief sloshes around in the firmament like lumps of clay spiralling into a potter's wheel. That's how gods get created, for example. They clearly must be created by their own believers, because a brief resume of the lives of most gods suggests that their origins certainly couldn't be divine. They tend to do exactly the things people would do if only they could, especially when it comes to nymphs, golden showers, and the smiting of your enemies."

"Now we have travelled a hundred million steps from the Datum, we are finding life systems entirely unlike our own - and yet we still find war. Must it always be so?"

"Genuine anger was one of the world's great creative forces. But you had to learn how to control it. That didn't mean you let it trickle away. It meant you dammed it, carefully, let it develop a working head, let it drown whole valleys of the mind and then, just when the whole structure was about to collapse, opened a tiny pipeline at the base and let the iron-hard stream of wrath power the turbines of revenge."

"Your own brain ought to have the decency to be on your side!"

"Rincewind stared, and knew that there were far worse things than Evil. All the demons in Hell would torture your very soul, but that was precisely because they valued souls very highly; evil would always try to steal the universe, but at least it considered the universe worth stealing. But the gray world behind those empty eyes would trample and destroy without even according its victims the dignity of hatred. It wouldn't even notice them."

"Death: "THERE ARE BETTER THINGS IN THE WORLD THAN ALCOHOL, ALBERT."Albert: "Oh, yes, sir. But alcohol sort of compensates for not getting them."

"There was a hell for blasphemers. There was a hell for disputers of rightful authority. There were a number of hells for liars. There was probably a hell for little boys who wished their grandmothers were dead. There were more than enough hells to go around."

"Where there is personality, there is discord."

"In Ankh-Morpork you can be whoever you want to be and sometimes people laugh and sometimes they clap, and mostly and beautifully, they don't really care."

"It wasn't that dwarfs weren't interested in sex. They saw the vital need for fresh dwarfs to leave their goods to and continue the mining work after they had gone. It was simply that they also saw no point in distinguishing between the sexes anywhere but in private. There was no such thing as a Dwarfish female pronoun or, once the children were on solids, any such thing as women's work."

"She got on with her education. In her opinion, school kept on trying to interfere with it."

"Million-to-one chances...crop up nine times out of ten."

"He'd been an angel once. He hadn't meant to Fall. He'd just hung around with the wrong people."

"Well, Hell was worse, of course, by definition. But Crowley remembered what Heaven was like, and it had quite a few things in common with Hell. You couldn't get a decent drink in either of them, for a start. And the boredom you got in Heaven was almost as bad as the excitement you got in Hell."

"HUMAN BEINGS MAKE LIFE SO INTERESTING. DO YOU KNOW, THAT IN A UNIVERSE SO FULL OF WONDERS, THEY HAVE MANAGED TO INVENT BOREDOM."

"It seems sensible to me that we should look to the medical profession, that over the centuries has helped us to live longer and healthier lives, to help us die peacefully among our loved ones in our own home without a long stay in God's waiting room."

"No! Please! I'll tell you whatever you want to know!" the man yelled. "Really?" said Vimes. "What's the orbital velocity of the moon?"What?"Oh, you'd like something simpler?"

"I'm a witch. It's what we do. When it's nobody else's business, it's my business."

"I get it,' said the prisoner. 'Good Cop, Bad Cop, eh?'If you like.' said Vimes. 'But we're a bit short staffed here, so if I give you a cigarette would you mind kicking yourself in the teeth?"

"How can anyone trust scientists? If new evidence comes along, they change their minds."

"You totally ruined my life, you know that?' said Rincewind hotly. 'I could have really made it as a wizard if you hadn't decided to use me as a sort of portable spellbook. I can't remember any other spells, they're all too frightened to stay in the same head as you!"

"Books must be treated with respect, we feel that in our bones, because words have power. Bring enough words together they can bend space and time."

"There are many horrible sights in the multiverse. Somehow, though, to a soul attuned to the subtle rhythms of a library, there are few worse sights than a hole where a book ought to be.Someone had stolen a book."

"Miss Tick sniffed. 'You could say this advice is priceless,' she said. 'Are you listening?''Yes,' said Tiffany.'Good. Now ... if you trust in yourself ...''Yes?''... and believe in your dreams ...''Yes?''... and follow your star ...' Miss Tick went on.'Yes?''... you'll still get beaten by people who spent THEIR time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy. Goodbye."

"Tiffany thought of the little spot in the woods where Granny Weatherwax lay. Remembered. And knew that You had been right. Granny Weatherwax was indeed here. And there. She was, in fact, and always would be, everywhere."

"Never trust any complicated cocktail that remains perfectly clear until the last ingredient goes in, and then immediately clouds."

"It's most unfair. Once people find out you're a vampire they act as if you're some kind of monster."

"His progress through life was hampered by his tremendous sense of his own ignorance, a disability which affects all too few."

"I DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOU, he said, BUT I COULD MURDER A CURRY."

"It looked like the sort of book described in library catalogues as 'slightly foxed', although it would be more honest to admit that it looked as though it had been badgered, wolved and possibly beared as well."

"By the time you've reached your sixties, you do know that one day you will die, and knowing that is at least the beginning of wisdom."

"I heard this story once," she said, "where this bloke got locked up for years and years and he learned amazin' stuff about the universe and everythin' from another prisoner who was incredibly clever, and then he escaped and got his revenge."What incredibly clever stuff do you know about the universe, Gytha Ogg?" said Granny."Bugger all," said Nanny cheerfully."Then we'd better bloody well escape right now."

"As far as she could see, children mostly argued, shouted, ran around very fast, laughed loudly, picked their noses, got dirty and sulked."