The Truth (Discworld, #25; Industrial Revolution, #2)

by Terry Pratchett

The world is made up of four elements: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. This is a fact well known even to Corporal Nobbs. It’s also wrong. There’s a fifth element, and generally it’s called Surprise.

But too much reading had taken its toll. William found that he now thought of prayer as a sophisticated way of pleading with thunderstorms.

He was all in favor of the countryside, provided that it was on the other side of a window.

There were no flies on C.M.O.T. Dibbler. He would have charged them rent.

“And these are your reasons, my lord?” “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.

Kings and lords come and go and leave nothing but statues in a desert, while a couple of young men tinkering in a workshop change the way the world works.”

William stepped forward at a healthy fraction of the speed of terror.

That was the major problem with Mr. Tulip, he thought as they made their way to the ground. It wasn’t that he had a drug habit. He wanted to have a drug habit. What he had was a stupidity habit, which cut in whenever he found anything being sold in little bags, and this had resulted in Mr. Tulip seeking heaven in flour, salt, baking powder, and pickled beef sandwiches.

And if it wasn’t for the duck whose presence on his head he consistently denied, the Duck Man would have been viewed as well-spoken and educated and as sane as the next man.

Smoking was his one vice. At least, it was his only vice that he thought of as a vice. The others were just job skills.

He could not exactly recall much more than that at the moment, due to memory loss brought on by lack of money.

If his body was a temple, it was one of those strange ones where people did odd things to animals in the basement, and if he watched what he ate, it was only to see it wriggle.

He knew about concerned citizens. Wherever they were, they all spoke the same private language, where “traditional values” meant “hang someone.”

What’s the quote from? It’s very meaningful without, er, meaning anything very much.”

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.

“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.

The dog in front of William didn’t look as if it could talk, but it did look as if it could swear.

The curry was particularly strange, since Mrs. Arcanum considered foreign parts only marginally less unspeakable than private parts and therefore added the curious yellow curry powder with a very small spoon, lest everyone should suddenly tear their clothes off and do foreign things.

they were men who measured culinary achievement by the amount you got on your plate.

No one said: Character assassination. What a wonderful idea. Ordinary assassination only works once, but this one works every day.

he doesn’t like anyone very much. Especially dwarfs and trolls.” “No law says you have to like dwarfs and trolls,” said Goodmountain. “Yes, but there ought to be a law against disliking them the way he does.” “Ah. Now you’ve drawn me a picture.” “Maybe you’ve heard the term ‘lesser races’?” “And now you’ve colored it in.”

What do you call them black humans that live in Howondaland?” “I know what my father calls them,” said William. “But I call them ‘people who live in Howondaland.’”

People change. My grandmother used to think humans were sort of hairless bears. He doesn’t anymore.” “What changed his mind?” “I reckon it was the dying that did it.”