Life Tips Daily

Hello again, here are some more humorous and occasionally philosophical quotations from the works of acclaimed fantasy/comedy author Terry Pratchett:

People came to Ankh-Morpork to seek their fortune. Unfortunately, other
people sought it too.

– (Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)

The hippo of recollection stirred in the muddy waters of the mind.

– (Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)

The Patrician was a pragmatist. He never tried to fix things that worked.
Things that didn’t work, however, got broken.

– (Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)

“Yes,” said the skull. “Quit while you’re a head, that’s what I say.”

– (Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)

Rincewind could scream for mercy in nineteen languages, and just scream in
another forty-four.

– (Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times)

“Luck is my middle name,” said Rincewind, indistinctly. “Mind you, my first
name is Bad.”

– (Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times)

Natural selection saw to it that professional heroes who at a crucial
moment tended to ask themselves questions like “What is my purpose in
life?” very quickly lacked both.

– (Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times)

The person on the other side was a young woman. Very obviously a young
woman. There was no possible way that she could have been mistaken for a
young man in any language, especially Braille.

– The goddess with the nice earrings
(Terry Pratchett, Maskerade)

He had a unique stride: it looked as though his body was being dragged
forward and his legs had to flail around underneath it, landing wherever
they could find room. It wasn’t so much a walk as a collapse, indefinitely
postponed.

– (Terry Pratchett, Maskerade)

Instead, people would take pains to tell her that beauty was only
skin-deep, as if a man ever fell for an attractive pair of kidneys.

– (Terry Pratchett, Maskerade)

After you’d known Christine for any length of time, you found yourself
fighting a desire to look into her ear to see if you could spot daylight
coming the other way.

– (Terry Pratchett, Maskerade)

I AM DEATH, NOT TAXES. I TURN UP ONLY ONCE.

– (Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay)

There were no public health laws in Ankh-Morpork. It would be like
installing smoke detectors in Hell.

– (Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay)

“Just because someone’s a member of an ethnic minority doesn’t mean they’re
not a nasty small-minded little jerk [...]“

– (Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay)

Getting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made
you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on.

– (Terry Pratchett, Hogfather)

“Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.”

– Bursar 1 - Hex 0
(Terry Pratchett, Hogfather)

Everything starts somewhere, though many physicists disagree. But people
have always been dimly aware of the problem with the start of things. They
wonder how the snowplough driver gets to work, or how the makers of
dictionaries look up the spelling of words.

– (Terry Pratchett, Hogfather)

“Give a man a fire and he’s warm for a day, but set fire to him and he’s
warm for the rest of his life.”

– (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

PEOPLE’S WHOLE LIVES DO PASS IN FRONT OF THEIR EYES BEFORE THEY DIE. THE
PROCESS IS CALLED ‘LIVING’.

– (Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent)

Lancre operated on the feudal system, which was to say, everyone feuded all
the time and handed on the fight to their descendants.

– (Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum)

Sam Vimes could parallel process. Most husbands can. They learn to follow
their own line of thought while at the same time listening to what their
wives say. And the listening is important, because at any time they could
be challenged and must be ready to quote the last sentence in full. A vital
additional skill is being able to scan the dialogue for telltale phrases
such as “and they can deliver it tomorrow” or “so I’ve invited them for
dinner?” or “they can do it in blue, really quite cheaply.”

– (Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant)

As castles went, this one looked as though it could be taken by a small
squad of not very efficient soldiers. For defence, putting a blanket over
your head might be marginally safer.

– (Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant)

“Don’t put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again.
That’s why they’re called revolutions. People die, and nothing changes.”

– (Terry Pratchett, Night Watch)

- “You’re Hells Angels, then? What chapter are you from?”

- REVELATIONS, CHAPTER SIX.

– Death in conversation with a biker
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Death was Nature’s way of telling you to slow down.

– (Terry Pratchett, Strata)

AIRPORTS: A place where people hurry up and wait.

– (Terry Pratchett, Wings)

SCIENCE: A way of finding things out and then making them work. Science
explains what is happening around us the whole time. So does RELIGION, but
science is better because it comes up with more understandable excuses when
it is wrong. There is a lot more Science than you think.

– (Terry Pratchett, Wings)

“You’re not allowed to call them dinosaurs anymore.” said Yo-less. “It’s
speciesist. You have to call them pre-petroleum persons.”

– (Terry Pratchett, Johnny and the Bomb)

“He’s a man of few words, and he doesn’t know what either of them mean,”
people said, but not when he was within hearing.

– (Terry Pratchett, The Carpet People)

I’ll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when
there’s evidence of any thinking going on inside it.

– (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

I think perhaps the most important problem is that we are trying to
understand the fundamental workings of the universe via a language
devised for telling one another where the best fruit is.

– (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

That’s all of them that I wanted to share, I hope I’ve inspired you to check out some of the books because they’re really fantastic reads when you’re looking for something light-hearted and entertaining.