Unseen Academicals (Discworld, #37; Rincewind, #8)

by Terry Pratchett

nyctophobia, his fear of strange noises

Nutt was young and as such did not have that reverence for age that is had by, mostly, the aged.

the kind of ladies who are never too

It is a well-known fact in any organization that, if you want a job done, you should give it to someone who is already very busy. It has been the cause of a number of homicides, and in one case the death of a senior director from having his head shut repeatedly in quite a small filing cabinet.

“I should point out, though, that under UU law, Archchancellor, a ban doesn’t matter. Wizards are not supposed to take notice of such a ban. We are not subject to mundane law.” “Of course. But nevertheless it is generally convenient to acknowledge the civil power,” said Ridcully, speaking like a man choosing his words with such care that he was metaphorically taking some of them outside to look at them more closely in daylight. The wizards nodded. What they had heard was: “Vetinari may have his little foibles, but he’s the sanest man we’ve had on the throne in centuries, he leaves us alone, and you never know what he’s got up his sleeve.” You couldn’t argue with that.

The last thing she wanted was to see her friend getting ideas in her head. There was such a lot of room in there for them to bounce around and do damage.

“He’ll suspect something, you know,” said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. “He suspects everything. That is why he is still Patrician.”

The bringer of bad news is never popular, especially when it’s on an empty plate.

Apes had it worked out. No ape would philosophize, “The mountain is, and is not.” They would think, “The banana is. I will eat the banana. There is no banana. I want another banana.”

The Librarian was not very familiar with love, which had always struck him as a bit ethereal and soppy, but kindness, on the other hand, was practical. You knew where you were with kindness, especially if you were holding a pie it had just given you.

“You two have a history, I think,” said Nutt. “You are a sharp one, aren’t you? Quiet and sharp. Like a knife. Yeah, I suppose it was a history. I wanted it to be more of a geography, but she kept slappin’ my hand.”

“Mother used to say that,” said Glenda, and tried to shake the thought out of her head. “And she was right, of course! Hard work never hurt anybody!”

“It is the lonely soul trying to reach out to the shared soul of all humanity, and possibly much further.

“He let you down, Mister Trev. He wasn’t the small boy’s god. It turned out that he was only a man. But he was not only a man. Everyone who has ever watched a game in this city has heard of Dave Likely. If he was a fool, then any man who has ever climbed a mountain or swum a torrent is a fool. If he was a fool then so was the man who first tried to tame fire. If he was a fool then so was the man who tried the first oyster, he was a fool, too—although I’m bound to remark that, given the division of labor in early hunter-gatherer cultures, he was probably a woman as well. Perhaps only a fool gets out of bed. But, after death, some fools shine like stars, and your father is such a one. After death, people forget the foolishness, but they do remember the shine. You could not have done anything. You could not have stopped him.

Don’t be smart. Smart is only a polished version of dumb. Try intelligence. It will surely see you through.”

When you watch people, you forget that people are watching you.

Wizards have no more idea of a friendly game than cats have of a friendly mouse.

It’s the real stuff. Champagne.” “What? I thought only nobby people drank that!” “No, just people with money, love. Sometimes it’s the same thing.”

the moral of all this is, you have to grab life or drop back into the crab bucket.”

he didn’t like people much, an affliction that affects many who have to deal with the general public over a long period,

Sometimes if you wanted to go to the ball you had to be your own fairy godmother.

A lot hinges on the fact that, in most circumstances, people are not allowed to hit you with a mallet. They put up all kinds of visible and invisible signs that say “Do not do this” in the hope that it’ll work, but if it doesn’t, then they shrug, because there is, really, no real mallet at all.

As you watch, so are you watched.

And the leopard must change his shorts, gentlemen, or we are all doomed.”

“I have told this to few people, gentlemen, and I suspect never will again, but one day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I’m sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged on to a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature’s wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that’s when I first learned about evil. It is built in to the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.”

Ridcully picked up a spoon and tapped the side of a wine glass, in the time-honored “Look, everybody, I’m trying to make a loud noise very quietly!” procedure, which has successfully eluded after-dinner speakers ever since the invention of glasses, spoons and dinners.

We play and are played and the best we can hope for is to do it with style.”

“The female mind is certainly a devious one, my lord.” Vetinari looked at his secretary in surprise. “Well, of course it is. It has to deal with the male one.

Juliet’s version of cleanliness was next to godliness, which was to say it was erratic, past all understanding and was seldom seen.

She raised a finger to her head and swiveled it a little, the universal symbol for “gone nuts.”

“That is a magnificent distillation of the situation,” said Hix. “Which is incredibly helpful while at the same time inaccurate in every possible way.

It was only a metaphorical hammer. It only hit you if you allowed it to be there.

“Of course, all he’s saying is you’ve got to do your best,” said the driver. “And the more best you’re capable of, the more you should do. That’s it, really.”

“Are you worthy?” said the woman. “What sort of question is that to ask a stranger?” “An interesting and possibly revealing one. Do you think the world is a better place with you in it, and would you do me the courtesy of actually thinking about your answer rather than pulling one off the ‘affronted’ rack? I’m afraid there’s far too much of that these days. People believe that acting and thinking are the same thing.” Faced with that, Glenda settled for, “Yes.”

The trouble with you is that you make assumptions. You see something and you think you know what you’ve seen. She certainly didn’t sound like a librarian, did she?

“But every time you make a candle and every time you shoe a horse, you change the things that everybody knows,” said Glenda.

“Everybody knows trolls eat people and spit them out. Everybody knows dwarfs cut your legs off. But at the same time everybody knows that what everybody knows is wrong.

“The interesting thing about ships is that the captains of ships have to be very careful when two ships are close together at sea, particularly in calm conditions. They tend to collide.” “Because of the wind blowing, and that?” said Glenda, thinking: In theory this is a romantic-novel situation and I am about to learn about ships. Iradne Comb-Buttworthy never puts a ship in her books. They probably don’t have enough reticules. “No,” said Nutt. “In fact, to put it simply, each ship shields the other ship from lateral waves on one side, so by small increments outside forces bring them together without their realizing it.”

“Oh, you know the sort of thing if you read the papers a lot,” said Ponder. “I seriously think they think that it’s their job to calm people down by first of all explaining why they should be overexcited and very worried.”

“How would people get worried if they weren’t told how to be?”

“I believe that he collects different types of stationery,” said Vetinari. “I have sometimes speculated that he might change his life for the better should he meet a young lady willing to dress up as a manila envelope.”

The singing of the National Anthem was always a ragged affair, the good people of Ankh-Morpork feeling that it was unpatriotic to sing songs about how patriotic you were, taking the view that someone singing a song about how patriotic they were was either up to something or a Head of State.*

that’s an enormous weight you’re putting on his shoulders.” “How much is on mine? How much of a weight is on yours?” “It’s rather like being a carthorse,” said Vetinari. “After a while one ceases to notice, it’s just the way of life.”

“Peace?” said Vetinari. “Ah, yes, defined as a period of time to allow for preparation for the next war.”

There should be no slaves, even slaves to instinct.”