The Fifth Elephant (Discworld, #24; City Watch, #5)

by Terry Pratchett

“It’s just that . . . I mean, people might . . .” she began. “I mean . . . well, you know what people call men who wear wigs and gowns, don’t you?” “Yes, miss.” “You do?” “Yes, miss. Lawyers, miss.” “Good. Yes. Good,” said Angua slowly. “Now try another one . . .” “Er . . . actors, miss?”

Sam Vimes could parallel process. Most husbands can. They learn to follow their own line of thought while at the same time listening to what their wives say. And the listening is important, because at any time they could be challenged and must be ready to quote the last sentence in full.

And even if you weren’t virtuous, as you had been brought up to understand the term, you did like to see virtue in other people, provided it did not cost you anything.

A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.

he thought of reading and writing like he thought about boots— you needed them, but they weren’t supposed to be fun, and you got suspicious about people who got a kick out of them.

Humans don’t like werewolves. Wolves don’t like werewolves. People don’t like wolves that can think like people, an’ people don’t like people who can act like wolves. Which just shows you that people are the same everywhere,” said Gaspode. He assessed this sentence and added, “Even when they’re wolves.” “I never thought of it like that.”

Ordinary golems would not harm a human because they had magic words in their head that ordered them not to. Dorfl had no magic words, but he didn’t harm people because he’d decided that it wasn’t moral.

“When people say ‘we must move with the times’ they really mean ‘you must do it my way.’

there are some who would say that Ankh-Morpork is . . . a kind of vampire. It bites, and what it bites it turns into copies of itself.

She didn’t mean to act like that, but she’d been born to it, into a class which had always behaved this way: You went through the world as if there was no possibility that anyone would stop you or question you, and most of the time that’s exactly what didn’t happen.

Humans hate werewolves because they see the wolf in us, but wolves hate us because they see the human inside—and I don’t blame them!”

All he knew was that you couldn’t hope to try for the big stuff, like world peace and happiness, but you might just about be able to achieve some tiny deed that’d make the world, in a small way, a better place.