Mr Pratchett

Well since you all know me, you must know that I believe Terry Pratchett to be one of the greatest writers of the last few hundred years.

To those of you who haven't read his works, his most widely read body of works is called the Diskworld Series.  In a fantasy setting he expounds on some fairly deep and complex themes.

Thought I'd share some  of the quotes and one liners of this series.

Tourist, Rincewind decided, means "Idiot."

For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks.

"It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever," he said. "Have you thought of going into teaching?"

- "Pardon me for living, I'm sure."
- NO-ONE GETS PARDONED FOR LIVING. (the character Death always speaks in capitols).

The only things known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Weedle. He reasoned like this: you can't have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir instantaneously. Presumably, he said, there must be some elementary particles -- kingons, or possibly queons -- that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, in mid-flight, they strike an anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expanded because, at that point, the bar closed.

Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote.

"You like it?" he said to Mort, in pretty much the same tone of voice people used when they said to St George, "You killed a what?"

Of course, Ankh-Morpork's citizens had always claimed that the river water was incredibly pure. Any water that had passed through so many kidneys, they reasoned, had to be very pure indeed.

The vermine is a small black and white relative of the lemming, found in the cold Hublandish regions. Its skin is rare and highly valued, especially by the vermine itself; the selfish little bastard will do anything rather than let go of it.

"I meant," said Iplsore bitterly, "what is there in this world that makes living worthwhile?" Death thought about it. "CATS," he said eventually, "CATS ARE NICE."

"Actors," said Granny, witheringly. "As if the world weren't full of enough history without inventing more."

The Ephebians made wine out of anything they could put in a bucket, and ate anything that couldn't climb out of one.

- "There's a door"
- "Where does it go?"
- "It stays where it is, I think."

Any wizard bright enough to survive for five minutes was also bright enough to realise that if there was any power in demonology, then it lay with the demons. Using it for your own purposes would be like trying to beat mice to death with a rattlesnake.

"You can't go around building a better world for people. Only people can build a better world for people. Otherwise it's just a cage."

"That's right," he said. "We're philosophers. We think, therefore we am."

His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools -- the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans -- and summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, "You can't trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there's nothing you can do about it, so let's have a drink."

Words are the litmus paper of the minds. If you find yourself in the power of someone who will use the word "commence" in cold blood, go somewhere else very quickly. But if they say "Enter", don't stop to pack.

"He says gods like to see an atheist around. Gives them something to aim at."

Om began to feel the acute depression that steals over every realist in the presence of an optimist.

YOU HAVE PERHAPS HEARD THE PHRASE THAT HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE? "Yes. Yes, of course." Death nodded. IN TIME, he said, YOU WILL LEARN THAT IT IS WRONG.

"Now we've got a truth to die for!" "No. Men should die for lies. But the truth is too precious to die for."

Ok children, that's it for today's lesson.  Be sure to study and there will be a test on this.

God Bless