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Terry Pratchett

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That's a nice song," said young Sam, and Vimes remembered that he was hearing it for the first time.
"It's an old soldiers' song," he said.
"Really, sarge? But it's about angels."
Yes, thought Vimes, and it's amazing what bits those angels cause to rise up as the song progresses. It's a real soldiers' song: sentimental, with dirty bits.
"As I recall, they used to sing it after battles," he said. "I've seen old men cry when they sing it," he added.
"Why? It sounds cheerful."
They were remembering who they were not singing it with, thought Vimes. You'll learn. I know you will.
From Night Watch
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Sooner or later it'd get to you. Death was fascinated by humans, and study was never a one-way thing. A man might spend his life peering at the private life of elementary particles and then find he either knew who he was or where he was, but not both.
From Hogfather
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
...it is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you're attempting can't be done.
From Equal Rites
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Success
The thing about football - the important thing about football - is that it is not just about football.
From Unseen Academicals
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Sports
Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.
From Jingo
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
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.
From Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter.
From Going Postal
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
People flock in, nevertheless, in search of answers to those questions only librarians are considered to be able to answer, such as "Is this the laundry?" "How do you spell surreptitious?" and, on a regular basis, "Do you have a book I remember reading once? It had a red cover and it turned out they were twins.
From Going Postal
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
The merest accident of microgeography had meant that the first man to hear the voice of Om, and who gave Om his view of humans, was a shepherd and not a goatherd. They have quite different ways of looking at the world, and the whole of history might have been different. For sheep are stupid, and have to be driven. But goats are intelligent, and need to be led.
From Small Gods
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny, Religion
The purpose of this lectchoor is to let you know where we are. We are in the deep cack. It couldn't be worse if it was raining arseholes. Any questions?
From Monstrous Regiment
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
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.
From Soul Music
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
DON'T THINK OF IT AS DYING, said Death. JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.
From Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death, Funny
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.
From Going Postal
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
YOU HAVE REACHED THE END OF CAKE
From Night Watch
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
The reaper does not listen to the harvest.
From Reaper Man
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Discworld teachers know this, and use it to demonstrate why universities are truly storehouses of knowledge: students arrive from school confident that they know very nearly everything, and they leave years later certain that they know practically nothing. Where did the knowledge go in the meantime? Into the university, of course, where it is carefully dried and stored.
From The Science of Discworld
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Education
This was not the time to say “I don’t know.” The brothers had begging, hungry looks, like dogs waiting to be fed. They wanted an answer. It would be nice if it was the right answer, but if it couldn’t be, then any answer would do, because then we would stop being worried...and then his mind caught alight.

That’s what the gods are! An answer that will do! Because there’s food to be caught and babies to be born and life to be lived and so there is no time for big, complicated, and worrying answers! Please give us a simple answer, so that we don’t have to think, because if we think, we might find answers that don’t fit the way we want the world to be.
From Nation
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
At the Temple of the Seven-Handed Sek a hasty convocation of priests and ritual heart-transplant artisans agreed that the hundred-span-high statue of Sek was altogether too holy to be made into a magic picture, but a payment of two rhinu left them astoundedly agreeing that perhaps He wasn't as holy as all that.
A prolonged session at the Whore Pits produced a number of colourful and instrutive pictures, a number of which Rincewind concealed about his person for detailed perusal in private. As the fumes cleared from his brain he began to speculate seriously as to how the iconograph worked.
From The Color of Magic
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.
From Diggers
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.
From Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it's as though you always get in ten 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.
From Moving Pictures
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny, Life
If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life.
From Guards! Guards!
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny, Life
Some things are fairly obvious when it's a seven-foot skeleton with a scythe telling you them
From Hogfather
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
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?
From Night Watch
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
That's a nice song," said young Sam, and Vimes remembered that he was hearing it for the first time.
"It's an old soldiers' song," he said.
"Really, sarge? But it's about angels."
Yes, thought Vimes, and it's amazing what bits those angels cause to rise up as the song progresses. It's a real soldiers' song: sentimental, with dirty bits.
"As I recall, they used to sing it after battles," he said. "I've seen old men cry when they sing it," he added.
"Why? It sounds cheerful."
They were remembering who they were not singing it with, thought Vimes. You'll learn. I know you will.
From Night Watch
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Sooner or later it'd get to you. Death was fascinated by humans, and study was never a one-way thing. A man might spend his life peering at the private life of elementary particles and then find he either knew who he was or where he was, but not both.
From Hogfather
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
...it is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you're attempting can't be done.
From Equal Rites
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Success
The thing about football - the important thing about football - is that it is not just about football.
From Unseen Academicals
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Sports
Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.
From Jingo
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
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.
From Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter.
From Going Postal
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
People flock in, nevertheless, in search of answers to those questions only librarians are considered to be able to answer, such as "Is this the laundry?" "How do you spell surreptitious?" and, on a regular basis, "Do you have a book I remember reading once? It had a red cover and it turned out they were twins.
From Going Postal
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
The merest accident of microgeography had meant that the first man to hear the voice of Om, and who gave Om his view of humans, was a shepherd and not a goatherd. They have quite different ways of looking at the world, and the whole of history might have been different. For sheep are stupid, and have to be driven. But goats are intelligent, and need to be led.
From Small Gods
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny, Religion
The purpose of this lectchoor is to let you know where we are. We are in the deep cack. It couldn't be worse if it was raining arseholes. Any questions?
From Monstrous Regiment
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
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.
From Soul Music
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
DON'T THINK OF IT AS DYING, said Death. JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.
From Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death, Funny
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.
From Going Postal
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
YOU HAVE REACHED THE END OF CAKE
From Night Watch
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
The reaper does not listen to the harvest.
From Reaper Man
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Discworld teachers know this, and use it to demonstrate why universities are truly storehouses of knowledge: students arrive from school confident that they know very nearly everything, and they leave years later certain that they know practically nothing. Where did the knowledge go in the meantime? Into the university, of course, where it is carefully dried and stored.
From The Science of Discworld
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Education
This was not the time to say “I don’t know.” The brothers had begging, hungry looks, like dogs waiting to be fed. They wanted an answer. It would be nice if it was the right answer, but if it couldn’t be, then any answer would do, because then we would stop being worried...and then his mind caught alight.

That’s what the gods are! An answer that will do! Because there’s food to be caught and babies to be born and life to be lived and so there is no time for big, complicated, and worrying answers! Please give us a simple answer, so that we don’t have to think, because if we think, we might find answers that don’t fit the way we want the world to be.
From Nation
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
At the Temple of the Seven-Handed Sek a hasty convocation of priests and ritual heart-transplant artisans agreed that the hundred-span-high statue of Sek was altogether too holy to be made into a magic picture, but a payment of two rhinu left them astoundedly agreeing that perhaps He wasn't as holy as all that.
A prolonged session at the Whore Pits produced a number of colourful and instrutive pictures, a number of which Rincewind concealed about his person for detailed perusal in private. As the fumes cleared from his brain he began to speculate seriously as to how the iconograph worked.
From The Color of Magic
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.
From Diggers
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.
From Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it's as though you always get in ten 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.
From Moving Pictures
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny, Life
If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life.
From Guards! Guards!
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny, Life
Some things are fairly obvious when it's a seven-foot skeleton with a scythe telling you them
From Hogfather
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
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?
From Night Watch
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
That's a nice song," said young Sam, and Vimes remembered that he was hearing it for the first time.
"It's an old soldiers' song," he said.
"Really, sarge? But it's about angels."
Yes, thought Vimes, and it's amazing what bits those angels cause to rise up as the song progresses. It's a real soldiers' song: sentimental, with dirty bits.
"As I recall, they used to sing it after battles," he said. "I've seen old men cry when they sing it," he added.
"Why? It sounds cheerful."
They were remembering who they were not singing it with, thought Vimes. You'll learn. I know you will.
From Night Watch
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Sooner or later it'd get to you. Death was fascinated by humans, and study was never a one-way thing. A man might spend his life peering at the private life of elementary particles and then find he either knew who he was or where he was, but not both.
From Hogfather
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
...it is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you're attempting can't be done.
From Equal Rites
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Success
The thing about football - the important thing about football - is that it is not just about football.
From Unseen Academicals
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Sports
Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.
From Jingo
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
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.
From Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter.
From Going Postal
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
People flock in, nevertheless, in search of answers to those questions only librarians are considered to be able to answer, such as "Is this the laundry?" "How do you spell surreptitious?" and, on a regular basis, "Do you have a book I remember reading once? It had a red cover and it turned out they were twins.
From Going Postal
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
The merest accident of microgeography had meant that the first man to hear the voice of Om, and who gave Om his view of humans, was a shepherd and not a goatherd. They have quite different ways of looking at the world, and the whole of history might have been different. For sheep are stupid, and have to be driven. But goats are intelligent, and need to be led.
From Small Gods
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny, Religion
The purpose of this lectchoor is to let you know where we are. We are in the deep cack. It couldn't be worse if it was raining arseholes. Any questions?
From Monstrous Regiment
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
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.
From Soul Music
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
DON'T THINK OF IT AS DYING, said Death. JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.
From Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death, Funny
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.
From Going Postal
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
YOU HAVE REACHED THE END OF CAKE
From Night Watch
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
The reaper does not listen to the harvest.
From Reaper Man
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Discworld teachers know this, and use it to demonstrate why universities are truly storehouses of knowledge: students arrive from school confident that they know very nearly everything, and they leave years later certain that they know practically nothing. Where did the knowledge go in the meantime? Into the university, of course, where it is carefully dried and stored.
From The Science of Discworld
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Education
This was not the time to say “I don’t know.” The brothers had begging, hungry looks, like dogs waiting to be fed. They wanted an answer. It would be nice if it was the right answer, but if it couldn’t be, then any answer would do, because then we would stop being worried...and then his mind caught alight.

That’s what the gods are! An answer that will do! Because there’s food to be caught and babies to be born and life to be lived and so there is no time for big, complicated, and worrying answers! Please give us a simple answer, so that we don’t have to think, because if we think, we might find answers that don’t fit the way we want the world to be.
From Nation
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
At the Temple of the Seven-Handed Sek a hasty convocation of priests and ritual heart-transplant artisans agreed that the hundred-span-high statue of Sek was altogether too holy to be made into a magic picture, but a payment of two rhinu left them astoundedly agreeing that perhaps He wasn't as holy as all that.
A prolonged session at the Whore Pits produced a number of colourful and instrutive pictures, a number of which Rincewind concealed about his person for detailed perusal in private. As the fumes cleared from his brain he began to speculate seriously as to how the iconograph worked.
From The Color of Magic
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.
From Diggers
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.
From Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it's as though you always get in ten 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.
From Moving Pictures
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny, Life
If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life.
From Guards! Guards!
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny, Life
Some things are fairly obvious when it's a seven-foot skeleton with a scythe telling you them
From Hogfather
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
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?
From Night Watch
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
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