The Wit And Wisdom Of Discworld

the novice is the Chosen One. He wants peace and justice and brotherly love.
    He also wants the Inquisition to stop torturing bin? now, please…
    Brother Preptil, the master of the music, had described Brutha’s voice as putting im in mind of a disappointed vulture arriving too late at the dead donkey.
    *
    There was something creepy about that boy [Brutha], Nhumrod thought. It was the way he looked at you when you were talking, as if he was listening.
    *
    ‘It’s a big bull,’ said the tortoise.
    ‘The very likeness of the Great God Om in one of his worldly incarnations!’ said Brutha proudly. ‘And you say you’re him?
    ‘I haven’t been well lately,’ said the tortoise.
    *
    ‘How should I know? I don’t know!’ lied the tortoise.
    ‘But you … you’re omnicognizant,’ said Brutha.
    ‘That doesn’t mean I know everything.’
    Brutha bit his lip. ‘Um. Yes. It does.’
    *
    Everyone in the city knew Cut-Me-Own-Hand-Off Dhblah, purveyor of suspiciously new holy relics, suspiciously old rancid sweetmeats on a stick, gritty figs, and long-past-their--sell-by dates.
    *
    ‘I – I do not know how to ride, my lord,’ said Brutha.
    ‘Any man can get on a mule,’ said Vorbis. ‘Often many times in a short distance.’
    *
    It was a small mule and Brutha had long legs; if he’d made the effort he could have remained standing and let the mule trot out from underneath.

    ‘My grandmother used to give me a thrashing every morning because I would certainly do something to deserve it during the day’ said Brutha.

    If you spend your whole time thinking about the universe, you tend to forget the less important bits of it. Like your pants.
    *
    People think that professional soldiers think a lot about fighting, but serious professional soldiers think a lot more about food and a warm place to sleep, because these are two things that are generally hard to get, whereas fighting tends to turn up all the time.
    *
    Humans! They lived in a world where the grass continued to be green and the sun rose every day and flowers regularly turned into fruit, and what impressed them? Weeping statues. And wine made out of water! A mere quantum-mechanistic tunnel effect, that’d happen anyway if you were prepared to wait zillions of years. As if the turning of sunlight into wine, by means of vines and grapes and time and enzymes, wasn’t a thousand times more impressive and happened all the time …
    *
    No other library anywhere, for example, has a whole gallery of unwritten books - books that would have been written if the author hadn’t been eaten by an alligator around chapter 1, and so on. Atlases of imaginary places. Dictionaries of illusory words. Spotters’ guides to invisible things. Wild thesauri in the Lost Reading Room. A library so big that it distorts reality and has opened gateways to all other libraries, everywhere and everywhen …
    *
    ‘Prince Lasgere of Tsort asked me how he could become learned, especially since he hadn’t got any time for this reading business. I said to him, “There is no royal road to learning, sire,” and he said to me, “Bloody well build one or I shall have your legs chopped off. Use as many slaves as you like.” A refreshingly direct approach, I always thought. Not a man to mince words. People, yes. But not words.’
    *
    Gods are not very introspective. It has never been a survival trait. The ability to cajole, threaten and terrify has always worked well enough. When you can flatten entire cities at a whim, a tendency towards quiet reflection and seeing-things-from-the-other-fellow’s-point-of-view is seldom necessary.
    Which had led, across the multi-verse, to men and women of tremendous brilliance and empathy devoting their entire lives to the service of deities who couldn’t beat them at a quiet game of dominoes. For example, Sister Sestina of Quirm defied the wrath of a local king and walked unharmed across a bed of coals and propounded a philosophy of sensible ethics on behalf of a goddess whose only real interest was in hairstyles, and Brother Zephilite of Klatch left his vast estates and his family and spent his life ministering to the sick and poor on behalf of the invisible god F’rum, generally consideredunable, should he have a backside, to find it with both hands, should he have hands. Gods never need to be very bright when there are humans around to be it for them.
    *
    Mountains rise and fall, and under them the Turtle swims onward. Men live and die, and