More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
only those with their feet on rock can build castles in the air.
The smug mask of virtue triumphant could be almost as horrible as the face of wickedness revealed.
The reward for toil had been more toil. If you dug the best ditches, they gave you a bigger shovel.
She’d never, ever asked for anything in return. And the trouble with not asking for anything in return was that sometimes you didn’t get it.
“My granny used to say if you’re too sharp you’ll cut yourself,” said Agnes.
books that were all about the world tended to be written by people who knew all about books rather than all about the world.
Did not Sonaton defeat the Beast of Batrigore in its very cave?” “I don’t know.” “He did. And didn’t the prophet Urdure vanquish the Dragon of Sluth on the Plain of Gidral after three days’ fighting?” “I don’t know that we’ve got that much time—” “And wasn’t it true the Sons of Exequial beat the hosts of Myrilom?” “Yes?”
She was not, herself, hugely in favor of motherhood in general. Obviously it was necessary, but it wasn’t exactly difficult. Even cats managed it. But women acted as if they’d been given a medal that entitled them to boss people around. It was as if, just because they’d got the label which said “mother,” everyone else got a tiny part of the label that said “child” . . .
One of Nanny Ogg’s hidden talents was knowing when to say nothing. It left a hole in the conversation that the other person felt obliged to fill.
Had not Jotto caused the Leviathan of Terror to throw itself onto the land and the seas to turn red with blood? Had not Orda, strong in his faith, caused a sudden famine throughout the land of Smale?
The Third Journey of the Prophet Cena, for example, seemed remarkably like a retranslation of the Testament of Sand in the Laotan Book of the Whole. On one shelf alone he found forty-three remarkably similar accounts of a great flood, and in every single one of them a man very much like Bishop Horn had saved the elect of mankind by building a magical boat.
“Did not Kazrin return three times into the valley of Mahag, and wrest the cup of Hiread from the soldiers of the Oolites while they slept?”
And did not Om say to the Prophet Brutha, ‘I will be with you in dark places’?”
“So you’ll know that so many people lead little lives, always under the whip of some king or ruler or master who won’t hesitate to sacrifice them in battle or turn them out when they can’t work anymore.”
Most people put up with most things, Agnes.”
“People need something today but they generally need something else tomorrow.
“Oh, we’re always all right. You remember that. We happen to other people.”
“There’s no grays, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.”
Since the prophet Brutha, Om was the silent god.
“Oh, I don’t know, I really don’t,” said Nanny. “I mean, it’s flattering and everything, but I really don’t think I could be goin’ out with a man with a limp.” “Limp what?”
music lover to the core, Nanny couldn’t help trotting over to inspect it. It was black, its pipes framed and enclosed in intricate ebony fretwork, with the stops and keyboard made of dead elephant. “How does it work?” she said. “Water power,”
Nanny ran her fingers over a brass plate screwed above the keyboard. It read: HLISTEN TO ZER CHILTREN OFF DER NIGHT . . . VOT VONDERFUL MHUSICK DEY MAKE. MNFTRD. BY BERGHOLT STUTTLEY JOHNSON, ANKH-MORPORK. “It’s a Johnson,” she breathed. “I haven’t got my hands on a Johnson for ages . . .” She looked closer. “What’s this? ‘Scream 1’? ‘Thunderclap 14’? ‘Wolf Howl 5’? There’s a whole set of stops just marked ‘Creaky Floors’! Can’t you play music on this thing?” “Oh yeth. But the old marthter wath more interethted in . . . effectth.”
Oats reflected on the story in the Book of Om—the story, really—about the prophet Brutha and his journey with Om across the burning desert, which had ended up changing Omnianism forever. It had replaced swords with sermons,
“Oh yes? That’s gods for you. Very self-centered, as a rule.”
“According to the prophet Brutha, to live properly is to believe in Om.” “Oho, that’s clever! He gets you coming and going,” said Granny. “It took a good thinker to come up with that.
he said in his Letter to the Simonites that it is through other people that we truly become people.” “Good. He got that one right.”
You say that you people don’t burn folk and sacrifice people anymore, but that’s what true faith would mean, y’see? Sacrificin’ your own life, one day at a time, to the flame, declarin’ the truth of it, workin’ for it, breathin’ the soul of it. That’s religion. Anything else is just . . . is just bein’ nice. And a way of keepin’ in touch with the neighbors.”
Don’t chase faith, ’cos you’ll never catch it.” She added, almost as an aside, “But, perhaps, you can live faithfully.”
the Agatean Chlong of Destiny!”
“They killed Thcrapth! The bathtardth!”
“He wath my only friend!”
“He wath alwayth ready with hith waggy tailth and hith cold nothe—” Igor sobbed.
An unwary rat, creeping across the flagstones, was too late. The mist flowed over it. There was a squeak, cut off, and when the mist had gone a few small white bones were all that remained. Some equally small bones, but fully assembled and wearing a black hooded robe and carrying a tiny scythe, appeared out of nowhere and walked over to them. Skeletal claws tippy-tapped on the stone. “Squeak?” said the ghost of the rat pathetically. SQUEAK, said the Death of Rats. This was really all it needed to know.
Agnes thought about Escrow, and the queues, and the children playing while they waited, and how evil might come animal sharp in the night, or grayly by day on a list
“Who knows, sire? Holiness is where you find it,”
DOWN, BOY! DOWN, I SAY! WILL YOU STOP—LET GO! LET GO THIS MINUTE! ALL RIGHT, LOOK . . . FETCH? FETCH? THERE WE GO . . . Death watched Scraps bound away. He wasn’t used to this.
THERE’S A SATISFACTORY DOG. NOW . . . DROP. LET GO, PLEASE. DID YOU HEAR ME SAY LET GO? LET GO THIS MINUTE!
