Discworld The Last Continent Quotes

It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life.

But we're a university! We have to have a library!" said Ridcully. "It adds tone. What sort of people would we be if we didn't go into the library?" "Students," said Senior Wrangler morosely.

I'm trying to remember how you tell the time by looking at the sun." -"I should leave it for a while, it's too bright to see the numbers at the moment.

I don't think I've drunk enough beer to understand that.

...the proliferation of luminous fungi or iridescent crystals in deep caves where the torchlessly improvident hero needs to see is one of the most obvious intrusions of narrative causality into the physical universe.

Ridcully was to management what King Herod was to the Bethlehem Playgroup Association.

We put all our politicians in prison as soon as they’re elected. Don’t you?” “Why?” “It saves time.

Creators aren't gods. They make places, which is quite hard. It's men that make gods. This explains a lot.

Once upon a time the plural of 'wizard' was 'war'.

Cake is not the issue here.

Rincewind had always been happy to think of himself as a racist. The One Hundred Meters, the Mile, the Marathon -- he'd run them all.

Now look," snapped the Dean, "we've searched everywhere for a decent library on this island. There simply isn't one! It's ridiculous. How is anyone supposed to get anything done?

Any true wizard, faced with a sign like 'Do not open this door. Really. We mean it. We're not kidding. Opening this door will mean the end of the universe,' would automatically open the door in order to see what all the fuss is about. This made signs rather a waste of time, but at least it meant that when you handed what was left of the wizard to his grieving relatives you could say, as they grasped the jar, 'We told him not to.

Knowledge is dangerous, which is why governments often clamp down on people who can think thoughts above a certain caliber.

We may even find out why the duck-billed platypus.* *Not why is it anything. Just why it is.

Ponder Stibbons was one of those unfortunate people cursed with the belief that if only he found out enough things about the universe it would all, somehow, make sense.

The thing about late-night cookery was that it made sense at the time. It always had some logic behind it. It just wasn’t the kind of logic you’d use around midday.

To be frank, I find religion rather offensive.

I THINK PERHAPS YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND. PEOPLE’S WHOLE LIVES DO PASS IN FRONT OF THEIR EYES BEFORE THEY DIE. THE PROCESS IS CALLED “LIVING.” WOULD YOU LIKE A PRAWN?

... and all those frogs going 'Rabbit, rabbit'..." "I think, sir, that it was 'Ribbit, ribbit'..." "So, what goes 'Rabbit, rabbit'?" "Rabbits, I think. All the time...

Unseen University was much bigger on the inside. Thousands of years as the leading establishment of practical magic in a world where dimensions were largely a matter of chance in any case had left it bulging in places where it shouldn't have places. There were rooms containing rooms which, if you entered them, turned out to contain the room you'd started with, which can be a problem if you are in a conga line.

Interesting thing, these fellows never seem to get the idea of perspective-' The Bursar thought, or received the thought: that's because perspective is a lie. If I know a pond is round then why should I draw it oval? I will draw it round because round is true. Why should my brush lie to you just because my eye lies to me?

We put all our politicians in prison as soon as they’re elected. Don’t you?’ ‘Why?’ ‘It saves time.

It felt like those treasured moments in bed when you’re just awake enough to know that you’re still nicely asleep.

It is very easy to get ridiculously confused about the tenses of time travel, but most things can be resolved by a sufficiently large ego.

To tell you the truth, I'm something of an atheist.

Haven’t you noticed that by running away you end up in more trouble?” “Yes, but, you see, you can run away from that, too,” said Rincewind. “That’s the beauty of the system. Dead is only for once, but running away is for ever.

Even now, if he closed his eyes, he could still see the God of Evolution beaming so happily as the cockroach stirred.

Palaeontology and archaeology and other skulduggery were not subjects that interested wizards. Things are buried for a reason, they considered. There’s no point in wondering what it was. Don’t go digging things up in case they won’t let you bury them again.

Интелектът е като краката - прекаленото количество се превръща в липса на качество.

This is not a book about Australia. No, it's about somewhere entirely different which happens to be, here and there, a bit... Australian. Still... no worries, right?

He hated weapons, and not just because they'd so often been aimed at him. You got into more trouble if you had a weapon. People shot you instantly if they thought you were going to shoot them. But if you were unarmed, they often stopped to talk. Admittedly, they tended to say things like, "You'll never guess what we're going to do to you, pal," but that took time. And Rincewind could do a lot with a few more seconds. He could use them to live longer in.

Los historiadores han observado que es en las épocas de abundancia cuando se siente el deseo de ir a la guerra. En tiempos de hambruna, la gente está demasiado ocupada intentando encontrar algo que comer. Cuando sólo tienen lo justo para ir tirando, las personas tienden a ser afables y educadas. Pero cuando se les sirve un banquete, enseguida deciden que ha llegado el momento de discutir quién se sienta dónde.

Existuje jistý druh vedoucích, kteří jsou známí svým "Moje dveře jsou vždycky otevřené" a bylo by pravděpodobně lepší utlouci se vlastním životopisem než pro ně pracovat.

Me parece que no lo entiendes. Las vidas de las personas pasan por delante de sus ojos antes de que mueran, y el proceso se llama 'vivir'. ¿Te apetece un camarón?

Hay lugares en que varios tiempos están ocurriendo a la vez y lugares en que apenas queda tiempo, y tiempos en que apenas hay lugar.

I'm quite sure primitive people have no difficulties surviving in a place like this, and think of all the things we have that our rude forefathers lacked.

As far as he could see, the drawings were simply alive. They might be colored earth on rock, but they were as alive as the kangaroo that'd just hopped away.

A wizard without a hat was just a sad man with a suspicious taste in clothes. A wizard without a hat wasn’t anyone.

Can I have another beer? It's amazing, it doesn't feem to have any essect on me, no matter how much I dnirk. Helps me think clearerer.

A man sits in some museum somewhere and writes a harmless book about political economy and suddenly thousands of people who haven’t even read it are dying because the ones who did haven’t got the joke.

People don’t live on the Disc any more than, in less hand-crafted parts of the multiverse, they live on balls. Oh, planets may be the place where their body eats its tea, but they live elsewhere, in worlds of their own which orbit very handily around the centre of their heads.

Historians have pointed out that it is in times of plenty that people feel like going to war. In times of famine they're simply trying to find enough to eat. When they've just enough to go round they tend to be polite. But when a banquet is spread before them, it's time to argue over the place settings.

Usually they defined "listening" as a period in which you worked out what you were going to say next.

Normalmente los magos definían 'escuchar' como un período durante el que decidías lo que dirías a continuación. Era desconcertante.

[Rincewind] a man who might well have had 'Victim' written all over him but also had 'Wizzard' written on his hat.

Well, she knew the risks when she got the job,” said the Dean. “What?” said the Senior Wrangler. “Are you saying that before you apply for the job of housekeeper of a university you should seriously consider being eaten by sharks on the shores of some mysterious continent thousands of years before you are born?” “She didn’t ask many questions at the interview, I know that.

He hated weapons, and not just because they'd so often been aimed at him. You got into more trouble if you had a weapon. People shot you instantly if they thought you were going to shoot them.

Whoever had designed the skeletons of creatures had even less imagination than whoever had done the outsides. At least the outside-designer had tried a few novelties in the spots, wool and stripes department, but the bone-builder had generally just put a skull on a ribcage, shoved a pelvis in further along, stuck on some arms and legs and had the rest of the day off. Some ribcages were longer, some legs were shorter, some hands became wings, but they all seemed to be based on one design, one size stretched or shrunk to fit all. - Ponder Stibbons

Like sheep which, having been driven to a pasture, can now spread out at their leisure, the clouds began to drift. Afternoon sunlight sliced through into the still waters. The boomerang hung in the sky, and the boy thought he would have to find a new word for the way the colours glowed. In the meantime, he looked down at the water and tried out the word he'd been taught by his grandfather, who'd been taught it by his grandfather, and which had been kept for thousands of years for when it would been needed. It meant the smell after rain. It had, he thought, been well worth waiting for.

It is often said about desert environments that there is in fact a lot of nutritious food around, if only you know what to look for. Rincewind mused on this as he pulled a plate of chocolate-covered sponge cakes from their burrow. They had dried coconut flakes on them. He turned the plate cautiously. Well, you couldn’t argue with it. He was finding food in the desert. In fact, he was even finding dessert in the desert.

Unfortunately, like many people who are instinctively bad at something, the Archchancellor prided himself on how good at it he was. Ridcully was to management what King Herod was to the Bethlehem Playgroup Association. His mental approach to it could be visualized as a sort of business flowchart with, at the top, a circle entitled “Me, who does the telling” and, connected below it by a line, a large circle entitled “Everyone else.

Still, he’d have to eat something and the dark brown goo that half filled the tin was the only available food in this vicinity that didn’t have at least six legs. He didn’t even think about eating mutton. You couldn’t, when it was looking at you so pathetically. He poked the goo with the stick. It gripped the wood like glue. “Gerroff!” A blob eventually came loose. Rincewind tasted it, gingerly. It was just possible that if you mixed yeasty beer and vegetables together you’d get— No, what you got was salty-tasting beery brown gunk. Odd, though…It was kind of horrible, but nevertheless Rincewind found himself having another taste.

The hypothesis behind invisible writings was laughably complicated. All books are tenuously connected through L-space and, therefore, the content of any book ever written or yet to be written may, in the right circumstances, be deduced from a sufficiently close study of books already in existence. Future books exist in potentia, as it were, in the same way that a sufficiently detailed study of a handful of primal ooze will eventually hint at the future existence of prawn crackers.

He’d decided to keep a journal in the hope that this might help. He looked at the recent entries. Probably Tuesday: hot, flies. Dinner: honey ants. Attacked by honey ants. Fell into waterhole. Wednesday, with any luck: hot, flies. Dinner: either bush raisins or kangaroo droppings. Chased by hunters, don’t know why. Fell into waterhole. Thursday (could be): hot, flies. Dinner: blue-tongued lizard. Savaged by blue-tongued lizard. Chased by different hunters. Fell off cliff, bounced into tree, pissed on by small grey incontinent teddy bear, landed in a waterhole. Friday: hot, flies. Dinner: some kind of roots which tasted like sick. This saved time. Saturday: hotter than yesterday, extra flies. V. thirsty. Sunday: hot. Delirious with thirst and flies. Nothing but nothing as far as the eye can see, with bushes in it. Decided to die, collapsed, fell down sand dune into waterhole.

A flash of inspiration struck him with all the force and brilliance that ideas have when they’re travelling through beer.

»Wir verhaften alle unsere Politiker, sobald sie gewählt sind.« »Weshalb?« »Das spart Zeit.«

People's whole lives do pass in front of their eyes before they die. The process is called 'living

Creators aren’t gods. They make places, which is quite hard. It’s men that make gods. This explains a lot.

Unfortunately, like many people who are instinctively bad at something, the Archchancellor prided himself on how good at it he was.

The coconut opened its eyes. It looked as if it had just seen something truly horrific, but this is a normal expression for baby orangutans and in any case it was looking at the Dean.

There’s a certain type of manager who is known by his call of ‘My door is always open’ and it is probably a good idea to beat yourself to death with your own CV rather than work for him.

Like a busy government which only passes expensive laws prohibiting some new and interesting thing when people have actually found a way of doing it, the universe relied a great deal on things not being tried at all.

Rincewind had always been happy to think of himself as a racist. The One Hundred Meters, the Mile, the Marathon—he’d run them all. Later, when he’d learned with some surprise what the word actually meant, he’d been equally certain he wasn’t one. He was a person who divided the world quite simply into people who were trying to kill him and people who weren’t. That didn’t leave much room for fine details like what color anyone was.

So what’s going to happen to me?’ The warder scratched his nose. ‘Gonna hang you by the neck until you’re dead, mate. Tomorrow morno.’ ‘You couldn’t perhaps just hang me by the neck until I’m sorry?’ ‘No, mate. Got to be dead.

But surely the purpose of—I mean, wouldn’t it be nice if you ended up with some creature that started to think about the universe—?” “Good gravy, I don’t want anything poking around!” said the god testily. “There’s enough patches and stitches in it as it is without some clever devil trying to find more, I can assure you. No, the gods on the mainland have got that right at least. Intelligence is like legs—too many and you trip yourself up. Six is about the right number, in my view.

Some chief went to prison to see the prime minister and said, ‘Mate, your mob can dig it all up and drop it over the edge of the world, no worries.’ ” “Why did he have to go to prison?” “We put all our politicians in prison as soon as they’re elected. Don’t you?” “Why?” “It saves time.

There’s a certain type of manager who is known by his call of “My door is always open” and it is probably a good idea to beat yourself to death with your own CV rather than work for him. In Ridcully’s case, however, he meant, “My door is always open because then, when I’m bored, I can fire my crossbow right across the hall and into the target just above the Bursar’s desk.

Existují takové věci jako jedlé... ne, delikátní pirohy v polévce, hrášky dokonale uvařené, rajská omáčka pikantní ve své chuťové plnosti a masová náplň z oněch částí zvířat, které by se daly většinou i pojmenovat. Jsou platonické burgery vyrobené z hovězího a ne z volské tlamy a kopyt. Jsou jisté obchody, kde mají smažené filé s pomfrity, kdy filé je ryba a ne jen bílá břečka v rakvičce ze smažené strouhanky a pomfrity jsou k jídlu a nedají se použít k holení. Jsou párky v rohlíku, kdy mají párky s masem společnou nejen barvu a jejich šťastní konzumenti si na ně nedávají hořčici, aby nepokazili tu chuť. Důležité však je, že se lidé dají naučit na to, aby dávali přednost občerstvení toho prvního typu a vyhledávali je. Je to, jako kdyby Machiavelli napsal kuchařku. Ale ať už se mají věci jakkoliv, neexistuje omluva pro nikoho, kdo dá na pizzu ananas.

I must say I’ve often wondered about that sort of thing myself,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. ‘Take frogs. Now, if I was a lady frog looking for a husband, I’d want to know about, well, size of legs, competence at catching flies—’ ‘Length of tongue,’ said Ridcully. ‘Dean, will you please take something for that cough?’ ‘Quite so,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. ‘Has he got a good pond, and so on. I can’t say I’d base my choice on his ability to inflate his throat to the same size as his stomach and go rabbit, rabbit.

And that had led to all the trouble with How to Dynamically Manage People for Dynamic Results in a Caring Empowering Way in Quite a Short Time Dynamically. Ponder didn't know when this book would be written, or even in which world it might be published, but it was obviously going to be popular because random trawls in the depths of L-space often turned up fragments. Perhaps it wasn't even just one book. And the fragments had been on Ponder's desk when Ridcully had been poking around. Unfortunately, like many people who are instinctively bad at something, the Archchancellor prided himself on how good at it he was. Ridcully was to management what King Herod was to the Bethlehem Playgroup Association. His mental approach to it could be visualized as a sort of business flowchart with, at the top, a circle entitled "Me, who does the telling" and, connected below it by a line, a large circle entitled "Everyone else." Until now this had worked quite well, because, although Ridcully was an impossible manager, the University was impossible to manage and so everything worked seamlessly. And it would have continued to do so if he hadn't suddenly started to see the point in preparing career development packages and, worst of all, job descriptions.

Rincewind had always been happy to think of himself as a racist. The One Hundred Meters, the Mile, the Marathon—he’d run them all. Later, when he’d learned with some surprise what the word actually meant, he’d been equally certain he wasn’t one. He was a person who divided the world quite simply into people who were trying to kill him and people who weren’t. That didn’t leave much room for fine details like what color anyone was. But he’d be sitting by the campfire, trying out a simple conversation, and suddenly people would get upset over nothing at all and drive him off. You didn’t expect people to get nasty just because you’d said something like, “My word, when did it last rain here?” did you?

But strange curves and bends and extrusions of glass had developed over the years, and quite often the sand was flowing backwards, or diagonally. Clearly, Rincewind had been hit by so much magic, had been thrust reluctantly through time and space so often that he’d nearly bumped into himself coming the other way, that the precise end of his life was now as hard to find as the starting point on a roll of really sticky transparent tape.

Gentlemen . . . I give you . . . the Peach Nellie.

Historians have pointed out that it is in times of plenty that people feel like going to war. In times of famine they’re simply trying to find enough to eat. When they’ve just enough to go round they tend to be polite. But when a banquet is spread before them, it’s time to argue over the place settings.

In fact it’s the view of the more thoughtful historians, particularly those who have spent time in the same bar as the theoretical physicists, that the entirety of human history can be considered as a sort of blooper reel. All those wars, all those famines caused by malign stupidity, all that determined, mindless repetition of the same old errors, are in the great cosmic scheme of things only equivalent to Mr. Spock’s ears falling off.

People’s Whole Lives Do Pass In Front Of Their Eyes Before They Die. The Process Is Called "Living".

Alle Stammesmythen sind wahr, wobei die Bedeutung des Wortes »wahr« gewissen Schwankungen unterliegt.

Es heißt, Hitze und Fliegen an diesem Ort könnten einen um den Verstand bringen. Aber das braucht niemand zu glauben, nicht einmal der malvenfarbene Elefant, der gerade vorbeiradelte.

Aber schon gewöhnliche Bücher sind gefährlich, und nicht nur jene mit Titeln wie "Plastiksprengstoff professionell hergestellt". Ein Mann sitzt irgendwo in einem Museum und schreibt ein harmloses Buch über politische Ökonomie, und plötzlich sterben Tausende von Menschen, die es nicht einmal kennen – weil jene, die es gelesen haben, den Witz nicht verstanden haben. Wissen ist gefährlich, deshalb greifen Regierungen manchmal hart gegen Leute durch, die Gedanken oberhalb eines gewissen Kalibers denken können.

Er wollte tatsächlich zur Stelle sein, wenn die Pflicht rief – allerdings lag die Stelle woanders.

Manchmal zahlt es sich nicht aus, auf die eigene geistige Gesundheit hinzuweisen.

Ich möchte vermeiden, daß jemand glaubt, ich würde die Rückkehr zur schlechten alten Zeit befürworten«, sagte der Professor für unbestimmte Studien und versuchte, sein Ohr von Sand zu befreien. »Aber früher haben wir Zauberer wie ihn umgebracht.

Er versuchte verzweifelt, im Gehirn des Erzkanzlers einen Spalt zu finden, um die Brechstange des Verstehens hineinzustoßen. Er spürte, wie die Fluten des Nichtbegreifens um ihn herum anschwollen, aber er weigerte sich zu ertrinken.

Rincewind spähte an dem Arm entlang und entdeckte an seinem Ende ein großes, zorniges Gesicht, das ihm mitteilte: Viel Bier sehnte sich nach einem Streit, und der Rest des Körpers teilte diesen Wunsch.

Weißt du, Stibbons, wenn du mit diesen Dingen etwas mehr Erfahrung hast, so wirst du erkennen, daß nichts gefährlicher ist als ein Gott, dem zuviel Zeit zur Verfügung steht…

Intelligenz ist wie Beine: zuviel davon, und man gerät ins Stolpern.

Sie genossen üppige Mahlzeiten, und nach einem wirklich guten Essen und einer Zigarre neigt selbst der gemeinste Dunkle Lord dazu, die Füße hochzulegen und der Welt mit Wohlwollen zu begegnen, vor allem dann, wenn sie ihm einen weiteren Brandy anbot.

Hielten viel von Menschenopfern und Kakao, die Tezumaner. Eine seltsame Kombination, finde ich. Fünfzigtausend Menschen töten und sich anschließend mit einer Tasse Kakao entspannen.

Die Zauberer von der Unsichtbaren Universität waren vielleicht die intellektuelle Creme oder zumindest der zerebrale Joghurt ihrer Generation.

How can you have any kind of costume without at least forty useful pockets?

was that it was perhaps the one place in this country

We must always remember that "I" is the smallest letter in the alphabet

There is nothing like a beetle when you are feeling depressed

I shall certainly endeavour to make a study of any primitive grass-skirted peoples hereabouts,' added the Dean, with a lawnmower look in his eyes.

Thou Shalt Really Try to Get Along with One Another.

We put all our politicians in prison as soon as they’re elected. Don’t you?

was amazing how human traits and affairs could so reliably and continuously be guided by a succession of big balls of plasma billions of miles away, most of whom have never even heard of humanity.

The figurehead, for example, was certainly vaguely female, although to the Dean’s disappointment it had the same detail as a half-sucked jellybaby.

I can’t help thinking, though, that we may have . . . tinkered with the past, Archchancellor,’ said the Senior Wrangler. ‘I don’t see how,’ said Ridcully. ‘After all, the past happened before we got here.’ ‘Yes, but now we’re here, we’ve changed it.’ ‘Then we changed it before.’ And that, they felt, pretty well summed it up. It is very easy to get ridiculously confused about the tenses of time travel, but most things can be resolved by a sufficiently large ego.