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June 10 - July 2, 2023
“Do you think I have others?” said Lord Vetinari. “My motives, as ever, are entirely transparent.” Hughnon reflected that “entirely transparent” meant either that you could see right through them or that you couldn’t see them at all.
And I’m sure I don’t have to remind you what happened when the late Mr. Hong chose to open his Three Jolly Luck Take-Away Fish Bar in Dagon Street during the lunar eclipse. Yes?
“Be careful. People like to be told what they already know. Remember that. They get uncomfortable when you tell them new things. New things . . . well, new things aren’t what they expect. They like to know that, say, a dog will bite a man. That is what dogs do. They don’t want to know that a man bites a dog, because the world is not supposed to happen like that. In short, what people think they want is news, but what they really crave is olds.
William wondered why he always disliked people who said “no offense meant.” Maybe it was because they found it easier to say “no offense meant” than actually to refrain from giving offense.
his father was right about one thing, at least, when he’d said that lies could run around the world before the truth could get its boots on. And it was amazing how people wanted to believe them.
a lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on.”
LIVES, MR. TULIP. JUST LIVES. NOT ALL MASTERPIECES, OBVIOUSLY, OFTEN RATHER NAIF IN THEIR USE OF EMOTION AND ACTION, BUT NEVERTHELESS FULL OF INTEREST AND SURPRISE AND, EACH IN ITS OWN WAY, A WORK OF SOME GENIUS. AND CERTAINLY VERY . . . COLLECTABLE.
“Is this the bit where my whole life passes in front of my eyes?” he said. NO, THAT WAS THE BIT JUST NOW. “Which bit?” THE BIT, said Death, BETWEEN YOU BEING BORN AND YOU DYING.
Do you mean that the public is a different thing from the people you just see walking about the place? The public thinks big, sensible measured thoughts while people run around doing silly things?”
I have certainly noticed that groups of clever and intelligent people are capable of really tsupid ideas,”
Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of directions.” He smiled. “It’s the only way to make progress. That, and, of course, moving with the times.
Because nothing has to be true forever. Just for long enough, to tell you the truth.
Words resemble fish in that some specialized ones can survive only in a kind of reef, where their curious shapes and usages are protected from the hurly-burly of the open sea. “Rumpus” and “fracas” are found only in certain newspapers (in much the same way that “beverages” are only found in certain menus). They are never used in normal conversation.
Most dwarfs were still referred to as “he” as well, even when they were getting married. It was generally assumed that somewhere under all that chain mail one of them was female and that both of them knew which one this was. But the whole subject of sex was one that traditionally minded dwarfs did not discuss, perhaps out of modesty, possibly because it didn’t interest them very much, and certainly because they took the view that what two dwarfs decided to do together was entirely their own business.
