The Wit And Wisdom Of Discworld

mind at that moment - vast water-powered engines for bringing down city walls on the heads of the enemy, new types of siege guns for pumping flaming oil over the enemy, gunpowder rockets that showered the enemy with burning phosphorus, and other manufactures of the Age of Reason.
    *
    ‘Proper footwear for a wizard is pointy shoes or good stout boots,’ said Ridcully. ‘When one’s footwear turns creepy, something’s amiss.’
    ‘It’s crêpe,’ said the Dean. ‘It’s got a little pointy thingy over the—’
    Ridcully breathed heavily. ‘When your boots change by themselves —’ he growled.
    ‘There’s magic afoot?’
    *
    Susan … it wasn’t a good name, was it? It wasn’t a truly bad name, it wasn’t like poor Iodine in the fourth form, or Nigella, a name which means ‘oops, we wanted a boy’. But it was dull. Susan. Sue. Good old Sue. It was a name that made sandwiches, kept its head in difficult circumstances and could reliably look after other people’s children.
    It was a name used by no queens or goddesses anywhere.
    And you couldn’t do much even with the spelling. You could turn it into Suzi, and it sounded as though you danced on tables for a living. You could put in a Z and a couple of Ns and an E, but it still looked like a name with extensions built on. It was as bad as Sara, a name that cried out for a prosthetic H.

    Dwarfs respected learning, provided they didn’t have to experience it.

    The Patrician leaned back in an attitude that suggested attentive listening. He was extremely good at listening. He created a kind of mental suction. People told him things just to avoid the silence.
    *
    ‘mumblemumblemumble,’ said the Dean defiantly, a rebel without a pause.
    *
    Chrysoprase had been a very quick learner when he arrived in Ankh-Morpork. He began with an important lesson: hitting people was thuggery. Paying other people to do the hitting on your behalf was good business.
    *
    There is something very sad about an empty dressing room. It’s like a discarded pair of underpants, which it resembles in a number of respects. It’s seen a lot of activity. It may even have witnessed excitement and a whole gamut of human passions. And now there’s nothing much left but a faint smell.
    *
    Foul Ole Ron was a physical schizophrenic. There was Foul Ole Ron, and there was the smell of Foul Ole Ron, which had obviously developed over the years to such an extent that it had a distinct personality. Anyone could have a smell that lingered long after they’d gone somewhere else, but the smell of Foul Ole Ron could actually arrive somewhere several minutes before he did, in order to spread out and get comfortable before he arrived. It had evolved into something so striking that it was no longer perceived with the nose, which shut down instantly in self-defence; people could tell that Foul Ole Ron was approaching by the way their ear wax started to melt.
    *
    ‘Ah, Drumknott,’ said Lord Vetinari, ‘just go and tell the head of the Musicians’ Guild he wants a word with me, will you?’
    *
    Glod the dwarf looked up at a blank wall.
    ‘I knew it!’ he said. ‘Didn’t I say? Magic! How many times have we heard this story? There’s a mysterious shop no one’s ever seen before, and someone goes in and buys some rusty old curio, and it turns out to—’
    ‘Glod—’
    ‘—be some kind of talisman or a bottle full of genie, and then when there’s trouble they go back and the shop—’
    ‘Glod—?’
    ‘—has mysteriously disappeared and gone back to whatever dimension it came from— yes, what is it?’
    ‘You’re on the wrong side of the road. It’s over here.’
    *
    Senior wizards developed a distinctive 50” waist, 25” leg shape that suggested someone who sat on a wall and required royal assistance to be put together again.
    *
    The Patrician was a pragmatist. He never tried to fix things that worked. Things that didn’t work, however, got broken.
    *
    The question seldom addressed is where Medusa had snakes. Underarm hair is an even more embarrassing problem when it keeps biting the top of the deodorant bottle.
    *
    According to rural legend - at least in those areas where pigs are a vital part of the household economy - theHogfather is a winter myth figure who, on Hogswatchnight, gallops from house to house on a crude sledge drawn by four tusked wild boars to deliver presents of sausages, black puddings, pork scratchings and ham to all children who have been good. He says