They say that the prospect of being hanged in the morning concentrates a man's mind wonderfully; unfortunately, what the mind inevitably concentrates on is that, in the morning, it will be in a body that is going to be hanged.
They say that the prospect of being hanged in the morning concentrates a man's mind wonderfully; unfortunately, what the mind inevitably concentrates on is that, in the morning, it will be in a body that is going to be hanged.
She was beautiful, but she was beautiful in the way a forest fire was beautiful: something to be admired from a distance, not up close.
Bishops move diagonally. That's why they often turn up where the kings don't expect them to be.
Thou shalt not submit thy god to market forces.
It was a backwards memory of an event in his future so terrifying that it had generated harmonics of fear all the way along his lifeline.
Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?
You did what you were told or you didn't get paid, and if things went wrong it wasn't your problem. It was the fault of whatever idiot has accepted this message for sending in the first place. No one cared about you, and everyone at headquarters was an idiot. It wasn't your fault, no one listened to you. Headquarters had even started an Employee of the Month scheme to show how much they cared. That was how much they didn't care.
She was convinced that she was anorexic, because every time she looked in the mirror she did indeed see a fat person.
Gods don't like people not doing much work. People who aren't busy all the time might start to think.
Time is a drug. Too much of it kills you.
Magic never dies. It merely fades away.
I commend my soul to any god that can find it.
You know how to pray, don't you? Just put your hands together and hope.
Sister Mary was a nurse and nurses, whatever their creed, are primarily nurses, which had a lot to do with wearing your watch upside down, keeping calm in emergencies, and dying for a cup of tea.
Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off.
We are here and it is now. The way I see it is, after that, everything tends towards guesswork.
No, what he didn't like about heroes was that they were usually suicidally gloomy when sober and homicidally insane when drunk.
I wonder if it's like this for mountain climbers, he thought. You climb bigger and bigger mountains and you know that one day one of them is going to be just that bit too steep. But you go on doing it, because it's so-o good when you breathe the air up there. And you know you'll die falling.
All tapes left in a car for more than about a fortnight metamorphose into Best of Queen albums.
You can't second-guess ineffability, I always say.
He says gods like to see an atheist around. Gives them something to aim at.
When you can flatten entire cities at a whim, a tendency towards quiet reflection and seeing-things-from-the-other-fellow's-point- of-view is seldom necessary.
On the Disc the gods dealt severely with atheists.
If you kept changing the way people saw the world, you ended up changing the way you saw yourself.
Aziraphale collected books. If he were totally honest with himself he would have to have admitted that his bookshop was simply somewhere to store them. He was not unusual in this. In order to maintain his cover as a typical second-hand book seller, he used every means short of actual physical violence to prevent customers from making a purchase. Unpleasant damp smells, glowering looks, erratic opening hours - he was incredibly good at it.
An Assassin, a real Assassin had to look like one-black clothes, hood, boots, and all. If they could wear any clothes, any disguise, then what could anyone do but spend all day in a small room with a loaded crossbow pointed at the door?
Humans! They lived in the world where the grass continued to be green and the sun rose every day and flowers regularly turned into fruit, and what impressed them? Weeping statues. And wine made out of water! A mere quantum-mechanistic tunnel effect, that'd happen anyway if you were prepared to wait zillions of years. As if the turning of sunlight into wine, by means of vines and grapes and time and anzymes, wasn't a thousand times more impressive and happened all the time...
Why not? If enough people believe, you can be god of anythingà
On the Disc, the Gods aren't so much worshipped, as they are blamed.
In defiance of Miss Maccalariat I'd like to commit hanky-panky with you, Miss Adora Belle Dearheart... well, certainly hanky, and possibly panky when we get to know one another better.
But the purpose of the book is not the horror, it is horror's defeat.
But here's some advice, boy. Don't put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That's why they're called revolutions.
It's no wonder most religions are born in the desert, because when men lay beneath that boundless night sky and look up at the infinite expanse of creation they have an uncontrollable urge to put something in the way
Words are the litmus paper of the mind.
Possession of the box conferred a kind of power on the wielder--which was that anyone, confronted with the hypnotic glass eye, would submissively obey the most peremptory orders about stance and expression.
It was also a room full of books and made of books. There was no actual furniture; this is to say, the desk and chairs were shaped out of books. It looked as though many of them were frequently referred to, because they lay open with other books used as bookmarks.
DON'T THINK OF IT AS DYING, said Death. JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.
But the helmet had gold decoration, and the bespoke armorers had made a new gleaming breastplate with useless gold ornamentation on it. Sam Vimes felt like a class traitor every time he wore it. He hated being thought of as one of those people that wore stupid ornamental armor. It was gilt by association.
Just because you can explain it doesn't mean it's not still a miracle.
Being Ymor's right-hand man was like being gently flogged to death with scented bootlaces.
Powiedzmy, z.e gdyby nadcia;ga? ca?kowity i absolutny chaos, on, w mokrym miedzianym pancerzu, stana;?by na szczycie wzgórza w czasie burzy z piorunami i wrzeszcza?: „Wszyscy bogowie to be;karty!
Look, he said to his imagination, if this is how you're going to behave, I shan't bring you again.
He looked up at them, a scruffy Napoleon with his laces trailing, exiled to a rose-trellised Elba.
Hat = wizard, wizard = hat. Everything else is frippery.
Last night there seemed to be a chance. Anything was possible last night. That was the trouble with last nights. They were always followed by this mornings.
But in his experience it was only a matter of time before the normal balance of the universe restored itself and started doing the usual terrible things to him.
Rincewind tried to force the memory out of his mind, but it was rather enjoying itself there, terrorizing the other occupants and kicking over the furniture.
He was determined to discover the underlying logic behind the universe- which was going to be hard, because there wasn't one.
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.
Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up.
© 2020 Inspirational Stories
© 2020 Inspirational Stories