Lords And Ladies Terry Pratchett Quotes

If cats looked like frogs we'd realize what nasty, cruel little bastards they are. Style. That's what people remember.

In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.

In fact, the mere act of opening the box will determine the state of the cat, although in this case there were three determinate states the cat could be in: these being Alive, Dead, and Bloody Furious.

Nanny Ogg looked under her bed in case there was a man there. Well, you never knew your luck.

Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder. Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels. Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies. Elves are glamorous. They project glamour. Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment. Elves are terrific. They beget terror. The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning. No one ever said elves are nice. Elves are bad.

Personal’s not the same as important. People just think it is.

Using a metaphor in front of a man as unimaginative as Ridcully was like a red flag to a bu... was like putting something very annoying in front of someone who was annoyed by it.

Bursar?" "Yes, Archchancellor?" "You ain't a member of some secret society or somethin', are you?" "Me? No, Archchancellor." "Then it'd be a damn good idea to take your underpants off your head.

The Monks of Cool, whose tiny and exclusive monastery is hidden in a really cool and laid-back valley in the lower Ramtops, have a passing-out test for a novice. He is taken into a room full of all types of clothing and asked: Yo, my son, which of these is the most stylish thing to wear? And the correct answer is: Hey, whatever I select.

If you really want to upset a witch, do her a favor which she has no means of repaying. The unfulfilled obligation will nag at her like a hangnail.

I thought unicorns were more . . . Fluffy.

Verence would rather cut his own leg off than put a witch in prison, since it'd save trouble in the long run and probably be less painful.

They'd smash up the world if they thought it would make a pretty noise.

The shortest unit of time in the multiverse is the New York Second, defined as the period of time between the traffic lights turning green and the cab behind you honking.

No matter what she did with her hair it took about three minutes for it to tangle itself up again, like a garden hosepipe in a shed [Which, no matter how carefully coiled, will always uncoil overnight and tie the lawnmower to the bicycles].

… people didn't seem to be able to remember what it was like with the elves around. Life was certainly more interesting then, but usually because it was shorter. And it was more colorful, if you liked the color of blood.

I don't hold with paddlin' with the occult," said Granny firmly. "Once you start paddlin' with the occult you start believing in spirits, and when you start believing in spirits you start believing in demons, and then before you know where you are you're believing in gods. And then you're in trouble." "But all them things exist," said Nanny Ogg. "That's no call to go around believing in them. It only encourages 'em.

I never said nothing..." "I know you never! I could hear you not saying anything! You've got the loudest silences I ever did hear from anyone who wasn't dead!

You call yourself some kind of goddess and you know nothing, madam, nothing. What don't die can't live. What don't live can't change. What don't change can't learn. The smallest creature that dies in the grass knows more than you.

Even the blind and meek and voiceless have gods.

It wasn't that Nanny Ogg sang badly. It was just that she could hit notes which, when amplified by a tin bath half full of water, ceased to be sound and became some sort of invasive presence.

Someone got killed up here.... It was outside. A tall man. He had one leg longer’n the other. And a beard. He was probably a hunter." "How’d you know all that?" "I just trod on ‘im.

Don't try the paranormal until you know what's normal.

This is a lovely party," said the Bursar to a chair, "I wish I was here.

The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.

What is magic? There is the wizard's explanation... wizards talk about candles, circles, planets, stars, bananas, chants, runes and the importance of having at least four good meals every day.

When you break rules, break 'em good and hard.

Stand before your god, bow before your king, kneel before your man.

Well, the news has got around. The Duchess of Keepsake has invited us to a ball, Sir Henry and Lady Withering have invited us to a ball, and Lord and Lady Hangfinger have invited us to... yes, a ball." "Well, that's a lot of..." "Don't you dare, Sam.

You couldn’t set out to be a good witch or a bad witch. It never worked for long. All you could try to be was a witch, as hard as you could.

A bad hunter chases, a good hunter waits.

The elevator shaft was a kind of heat sink. Hot food was cold by the time it arrived. Cold food got colder. No one knew what would happen to ice cream, but it would probably involve some rewriting of the laws of thermodynamics.

On a million hillsides the girl ran, on a million bridges the girl chose, on a million paths the woman stood... All different, all one. All she could do for all of them was be herself, here and now, as hard as she could.

Nanny Ogg was an attractive lady, which is not the same as being beautiful. She fascinated Casanunda. She was an incredibly comfortable person to be around, partly because she had a mind so broad it could accommodate three football fields and a bowling alley.

You can’t say ‘if this didn’t happen then that would have happened’ because you don’t know everything that might have happened. You might think something’d be good, but for all you know it could have turned out horrible. You can’t say ‘If only I’d…’ because you could be wishing for anything. The point is, you’ll never know. You’ve gone past. So there’s no use thinking about it.

Humans are always slightly lost. It's a basic characteristic.

So I had to learn. All my life. The hard way. And the hard way’s pretty hard, but not so hard as the easy way. I learned.

I could hear you not saying anything! You’ve got the loudest silences I ever did hear from anyone who wasn’t dead!

Humans take. They plough with iron. They ravage the land.' 'Some do, I'll grant you that. Others put back more'n they take. They put back love. They've got soil in their bones.

The price for being the best is always... having to be the best.

She wore so much thick white makeup in order to conceal her naturally rosy complexion that if she turned around suddenly her face would probably end up on the back of her head.

Don't be ridiculous, man," said Ridcully, "there's no such thing as dwarf smuggling." "Yeah? Then what's that you've got there?" "I'm a giant," said Casanunda. "Giants are a lot bigger." "I've been ill.

There was something about the eyes. It wasn’t the shape or the color. The was no evil glint. But there was… … a look. It was such a look that a microbe might encounter if it could see up from the bottom end of the microscope. It said: You are nothing. It said: You are flawed, you have no value. It said: You are animal. It said: Perhaps you may be a pet, or perhaps you may be a quarry. It said: And the choice is not yours.

We (people) only remembered that elves sang. But we forgot what they sang about.

Nanny Ogg gave this the same consideration as would a nuclear physicist who'd just been told that someone was banging two bits of sub-critical uranium together to keep warm.

The current state of knowledge can be summarized thus: In the beginning, there was nothing, which exploded.

Greebo had spent an irritating two minutes in that box. Technically, a cat locked in a box may be alive or it may be dead. You never know until you look. In fact, the mere act of opening the box will determine the state of the cat, although in this case there were three determinate states the cat could be in: these being Alive, Dead, and Bloody Furious.

It was always cheaper to build a new 33-MegaLith circle than upgrade an old slow one.

But all them things exist," said Nanny Ogg. "That's no call to go around believing in them. It only encourages 'em.

Sufficiently close examination changes the thing being observed.

No. It’s just personal. Personal’s not the same as important. People just think it is.

I ain’t against gods and goddesses, in their place. But they’ve got to be the ones we make ourselves. Then we can take ’em to bits for the parts when we don’t need ’em anymore, see?

It was here that the thaum, hitherto believed to be the smallest possible particle of magic, was succesfully demonstrated to be made up of /resons/ (Lit.: 'Thing-ies') or reality fragments. Currently research indicates that each reson is itself made up of a combination of at least five 'flavours', known as 'up', 'down', 'sideways', 'sex appeal' and 'peppermint'.

But what we have here is not a nice girl, as generally understood. For one thing, she’s not beautiful. There’s a certain set to the jaw and arch to the nose that might, with a following wind and in the right light, be called handsome by a good-natured liar. Also, there’s a certain glint in her eye generally possessed by those people who have found that they are more intelligent than most people around them but who haven’t yet learned that one of the most intelligent things they can do is prevent said people ever finding this out.

You call yourself some kind of goddess and you know nothing, madam, nothing. What don’t die can’t live. What don’t live can’t change. What don’t change can’t learn. The smallest creature that dies in the grass knows more than you. You’re right. I’m older. You’ve lived longer than me but I’m older than you. And better’n you. And, madam, that ain’t hard.

Nanny Ogg appreciated fine wine in her very own way. It would never have occurred to Casanunda that anyone would top up white wine with port merely because she'd reached the end of the bottle.

There are very few starts. Oh, some things seem to be beginnings. The curtain goes up, the first pawn moves, the first shot is fired - but that's not the start. The play, the game, the war is just a little window on a ribbon of events that may extend back thousands of years. The point is, there's always something before. It's always a case of Now Read On.

Shoot the dictator and prevent the war? But the dictator is merely the tip of the whole festering boil of social pus from which dictators emerge; shoot one, and there’ll be another one along in a minute. Shoot him too? Why not shoot everyone and invade Poland? In fifty years’, thirty years’, ten years’ time the world will be very nearly back on its old course. History always has a great weight of inertia.

Magrat woke up. And knew she wasn’t a witch anymore. The feeling just crept over her, as part of the normal stock-taking that any body automatically does in the first seconds of emergence from the pit of dreams: arms: 2, legs: 2, existential dread: 58%, randomized guilt: 94%, witchcraft level: 00.00.

Granny Weatherwax was stretched rigid on her bed. Her face was gray, her skin was cold. People had discovered her like this before, and it always caused embarrassment. So now she reassured visitors but tempted fate by always holding, in her rigid hands, a small handwritten sign which read: I ATE’NT DEAD.

Gods might note the fall of a sparrow but they don’t make any effort to catch them.

What is magic? Then there is the witches' explanation, which comes in two forms, depending on the age of the witch. Older witches hardly put words to it at all, but may suspect in their hearts that the universe really doesn't know what the hell is going on and consists of a zillion trillion billion possibilities, and could become any one of them if a trained mind rigid with quantum certainty was inserted into the crack and twisted; that, if you really had to make someone's hat explode, all you needed to do was twist into that universe where a large number of hat molecules all decide at the same time to bounce off in different directions. Younger witches, on the other hand, talk about it all the time and believe it involves crystals, mystic forces, and dancing about without yer drawers on. Everyone may be right, all at the same time. That's the thing about quantum.

Stand before your god, bow before your king, and kneel before your man. Recipe for a happy life, that is,

Sometimes the truth keeps itself alive in devious ways despite the best efforts of the official keepers of information.

But there was a price. No-one asked you to pay it, but the very absence of demand was a moral obligation. You tended not to swat. You dug lightly. You fed the dog. You paid. You cared; not because it was kind or good, but because it was right. You left nothing but memories, you took nothing but experience.

Many worlds are iron, at the core. But the Discworld is as coreless as a pancake. On the Disc, if you enchant a needle it will point to the Hub, where the magical field is strongest. It’s simple. Elsewhere, on worlds designed with less imagination, the needle turns because of the love of iron.

In front of her the cat Greebo, glad to be home again, lay on his back with all four paws in the air, doing his celebrated something-found-in-the-gutter impersonation.

There had been plenty of singers whose high notes could smash a glass but Nanny's high C could clean it.

There are no delusions for the dead. Dying is like waking up after a really good party, when you have one or two seconds of innocent freedom before you recollect all the things you did last night which seemed so logical and hilarious at the time, and then you remember the really amazing thing you did with a lampshade and two balloons, which had them in stitches, and now you realize you’re going to have to look a lot of people in the eye today and you’re sober now and so are they but you can both remember.

-Pero tengan en cuenta -dijo Ponder- que los cementerios están llenos de gente que fue más valiente que sensata.

Nanny Ogg never did any housework herself, but she was the cause of housework

sooner or later the graveyards are full of everybody

Don’t hold with schools,” said Granny Weatherwax. “They gets in the way of education.

You never know until you look, said Nanny Ogg, expounding her own Uncertainty Principle.

They've got, she spat the word, 'style. Beauty. Grace. That's what matters. If cats looked like frogs we'd realize what nasty, cruel little bastards they are.

She's a queen. That's pretty high,' said Nanny Ogg. 'Almost as high as witches.

Truly stupid wizards have the life expectancy of a glass hammer.

That’s the thing about the future. It could turn out to be anything. And everything.

In the beginning, there was nothing, which exploded.     —Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies (1992)

Some people might say this is important.” “No. It’s just personal. Personal’s not the same as important. People just think it is.

Siguiendo el camino más duro, que aun así no es tan duro como el camino fácil.

What about the fire?’ she said. ‘What fire?’ ‘Swept through our house just after we were married. Killed us both.’ ‘What fire? I don’t know anything about any fire?’ Granny turned around. ‘Of course not! It didn’t happen. But the point is, it might have happened. You can’t say “if this didn’t happen then that would have happened” because you don’t know everything that might have happened. You might think something’d be good, but for all you know it could have turned out horrible. You can’t say “If only I’d …” because you could be wishing for anything. The point is, you’ll never know. You’ve gone past. So there’s no use thinking about it. So I don’t.

The book was commonly known as the Buggre Alle This Bible. The lengthy compositor's error, if such it may be called, occurs in the book of Ezekiel, chapter 48, verse five. 2. And bye the border of Dan, fromme the east side fo the west side, a portion for Afher. 3. And by the border of Afher, fromme the east side even untoe the west side, a portion for Naphtali. 4. And by the border of Naphtali, from the east side untoe the west side, a portion for Manaffeh. 5. Buggre Alle this for a Larke. I amme sick to mye Hart of typefettinge. Master Biltonn if no Gentelmann, and Master Scagges noe more than a tighte fisted Southwarke Knobbefticke. I telle you, onne a daye laike thif Ennywone withe half and oz of Sense shoulde bee oute in the Sunneshain, ane nott Stucke here alle the liuelong daie inn thif mowldey olde By-Our-Lady Workefhoppe. @ *"Æ@;!* 6. And bye the border of Ephraim, from the east fide even untoe the west fide, a portion for Reuben.* * The Buggre Alle This Bible was also noteworthy for having twenty-seven verses in the third chapter of Genesis, instead of the more usual twenty-four. They followed verse 24, which in the King James version reads: "So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life," and read: 25 And the Lord spake unto the Angel that guarded the eastern gate, saying Where is the flaming sword which was given unto thee? 26 And the Angel said, I had it here only a moment ago, I must have put it down some where, forget my head next. 27 And the Lord did not ask him again.

Then she wound up the clock. Witches didn’t have much use for clocks, but she kept it for the tick…well, mainly for the tick. It made a place seem lived in. It had belonged to her mother, who’d wound it up every day. It hadn’t come as a surprise to her when her mother died, firstly because Esme Weatherwax was a witch and witches have an insight into the future and secondly because she was already pretty experienced in medicine and knew the signs. So she’d had a chance to prepare herself, and hadn’t cried at all until the day afterward, when the clock stopped right in the middle of the funeral lunch. She’d dropped a tray of ham rolls and then had to go and sit by herself in the privy for a while, so that no one would see.

Old Sobriety's son? How is the old devil?" "Dunno, sir, what with him being dead." "Oh dear. How long ago?" "These past thirty years," said Shawn. "But you don't look any older than twen-" Ponder began. Ridcully elbowed him sharply in the ribcage. "This is the countryside," he hissed. "People do things differently here. And more often.

Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder. Elves are marvelous. They cause marvels. Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies. Elves are glamorous. They project glamour. Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment. Elves are terrific. They beget terror. The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning. No one ever said elves are nice. Elves are bad.

The thing about elves is they've got no... begins with m," Granny snapped her fingers irritably. "Manners?" "Hah! Right, but no" "Muscle? Mucus? Mystery?" "No. No. No. Means like... seein' the other person's point of view." Verence tried to see the world from a Granny Weatherwax perspective and suspicion dawned. "Empathy?" "Right. None at all.

-Examinó la etiqueta-. ¿Chateau Maison? Chat-eau... Eso es extranjero para aguas de gato, sabes, pero supongo que sólo es su manera de decirlo, porque ya me he dado cuenta de que no es aguas de gato. Las auténticas aguas de gato tienen un sabor más seco.

There are very few starts. Oh, some things seem to be beginnings. The curtain goes up, the first pawn moves, the first shot is fired*—but that’s not the start. The play, the game, the war is just a little window on a ribbon of events that may extend back thousands of years. The point is, there’s always something before. It’s always a case of Now Read On.

When you’re a cork in someone else’s stream of consciousness, all you can do is spin and bob in the eddies.

That’s the way of it,’ she said. ‘It’s not what you’ve got that matters, it’s how you’ve got it. Well, we’re just about ready, then.

Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, especially simian ones. They’re not all that subtle.

you can't say "if this didn't happen then that would have happened" because you don't know everything that might have happened.You might think something'd be good, but for all you know, it could have turned out horrible. You can't say "If only I'd ..." because you could be wishing for anything. The point is, you'll never know. You've gone past. So there's no use thinking about it. So I don't

Granny Weatherwax personally disliked young Pewsey. She disliked all small children, which is why she got on with them so well. In Pewsey's case, she felt that no one should be allowed to wander around in just a vest even if they were four years old. And the child had a permanently runny nose and ought to be provided with a handkerchief or, failing that, a cork. Nanny Ogg, on the other hand, was instant putty in the hands of any grandchild, even one as sticky as Pewsey "Want sweetie," growled Pewsey, in that curiously deep voice some young children have. "Just in a moment, my duck, I'm talking to the lady," Nanny Ogg fluted. "Want sweetie now." "Bugger off, my precious, Nana's busy right this minute." Pewsey pulled hard on Nanny Ogg's skirts. "Now sweetie now!" Granny Weatherwax leaned down until her impressive nose was about level with Pewsey's gushing one. "If you don't go away," she said gravely, "I will personally rip your head off and fill it with snakes." "There!" said Nanny Ogg. "There's lots of poor children in Klatch that'd be grateful for a curse like that." Pewsey's little face, after a second or two of uncertainty, split into a pumpkin grin. "Funny lady," he said.

Greebo always slept on Nanny’s bed; the way he’d affectionately try to claw your eyeballs out in the morning was as good as an alarm clock. But she always left a window open all night in case he wanted to go out and disembowel something, bless him.

The feeling just crept over her, as part of the normal stock-taking that any body automatically does in the first seconds of emergence from the pit of dreams: arms: 2, legs: 2, existential dread: 58%, randomized guilt: 94%, witchcraft level: 00.00.

This was because the hawks and falcons in the castle mews were all Lancre birds and therefore naturally possessed of a certain “sod you” independence of mind. After much patient breeding and training Hodgesaargh had managed to get them to let go of someone’s wrist, and now he was working on stopping them viciously attacking the person who had just been holding them, i.e., invariably Hodgesaargh. He was nevertheless a remarkably optimistic and good-natured man who lived for the day when his hawks would be the finest in the world. The hawks lived for the day when they could eat his other ear.

Technically, a cat locked in a box may be alive or it may be dead. You never know until you look. In fact, the mere act of opening the box will determine the state of the cat, although in this case there were three determinate states the cat could be in: these being Alive, Dead, and Bloody Furious.

La cabaña de una bruja es un objeto arquitectónico muy preciso. Exactamente no es que se la construya, sino que se va acumulando a lo largo de los años conforme se van uniendo las distintas áreas de reparación, como un calcetín hecho enteramente de remiendos. La chimenea se retuerce como un sacacorchos. El techo de paja y cañizo es tan viejo que pequeños pero robustos árboles crecen en él, todos los suelos hacen pendiente, y de noche cruje como un velero en una tormenta. Si al menos dos paredes no están apuntaladas con alguna que otra viga, entonces no es una auténtica cabaña de bruja, sino meramente el hogar de una vieja medio chocha que lee las hojas del té y habla con su gato.

What is magic? Then there is the witches’ explanation, which comes in two forms, depending on the age of the witch. Older witches hardly put words to it at all, but may suspect in their hearts that the universe really doesn’t know what the hell is going on and consists of a zillion trillion billion possibilities, and could become any one of them if a trained mind rigid with quantum certainty was inserted in the crack and twisted; that, if you really had to make someone’s hat explode, all you needed to do was twist into that universe where a large number of hat molecules all decide at the same time to bounce off in different directions. Younger witches, on the other hand, talk about it all the time and believe it involves crystals, mystic forces, and dancing about without yer drawers on. Everyone may be right, all at the same time. That’s the thing about quantum.