Read Online The Wit And Wisdom Of Discworld by Stephen Briggs Terry Pratchett - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Stephen Briggs Terry Pratchett
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doors down.’
*
The Supreme Grand Master rapped his gavel for attention. ‘I call the Unique and Supreme Lodge of the Elucidated Brethren to order,’ he intoned. ‘Is the Door of Knowledge sealed fast against heretics and knowlessmen?’
‘Stuck solid,’ said Brother Doorkeeper. ‘It’s the damp. I’ll bring my plane in next week, soon have it—’
‘All right, all right,’ said the Supreme Grand Master testily. ‘Just a yes would have done.’
*
Minor thief Zebbo Mooty has just been incinerated by a dragon.
‘Do you know, a fortune-teller once told me I’d die in my bed, surrounded by grieving great-grandchildren,’ said Mooty. ‘What do you think of that, eh?’
I THINK SHE WAS WRONG .
*
The Patrician nodded.
‘I shall deal with the matter momentarily,’ he said. It was a good word. It always made people hesitate. They were never quite sure whether he meant he’d deal with it now, or just deal with it briefly. And no one ever dared ask.
*
You came to [the Patrician] with a perfectly reasonable complaint. Next thing you knew, you were shuffling out backwards, bowing and scraping, relieved simply to be getting away. You had to hand it to the Patrician, he admitted grudgingly. If you didn’t, he sent men to come and take it away.
The Patrician gave him a sweet smile. ‘Thank you for coming to see me.Don’t hesitate th4 leave.’
The Watch hadn’t liked it, but the plain fact was that the thieves were far better at controlling crime than the Watch had ever been. After all, the Watch had to work twice as hard to cut crime just a little, whereas all the Thieves’ Guild had to do was to work less.
*
The only reason you couldn’t say that Nobby was close to the animal kingdom was that the animal kingdom would get up and walk away.
*
Nobby was a small, bandy-legged man, with a certain resemblance to a chimpanzee who never got invited to tea parties.
*
Sergeant Colon owed thirty years of happy marriage to the fact that Mrs Colon worked all day and Sergeant Colon worked all night. They communicated by means of notes. He got her tea ready before he left at night, she left his breakfast nice and hot in the oven in the mornings. They had three grown-up children, all born, Vimes had assumed, as a result of extremely persuasive handwriting.
*
You could describe Sergeant Colon like this: he was the sort of man who, if he took up a military career, would automatically gravitate to the post of sergeant. You couldn’t imagine him ever being a corporal. Or, for that matter, a captain. If he didn’t take up a military career, then he looked cut out for something like, perhaps, a sausage butcher; some job where a big red face and a tendency to sweat even in frosty weather were practically part of the specification.
*
Every town in the multiverse has a part that is something like Ankh-Morpork’s Shades. It’s a sort of black hole of bred-in-the-brickwork lawlessness. Put it like this: even the criminals were afraid to walk the streets.
*
You need a special kind of mind to rule a city like Ankh-Morpork, and Lord Vetinari had it. But then, he was a special kind of person.
You had to get up very early in the morning to get the better of the Patrician; in fact, it was wiser not to go to bed at all.
But he was popular, in a way. Under his hand, for the first time in a thousand years, Ankh-Morpork operated. It might not be fair or just or particularly democratic, but it worked. It was said that he would tolerate absolutely anything apart from anything that threatened the city † …
Ankh-Morpork!
Brawling city of a hundred thousand souls! And, as the Patrician privately observed, ten times that number of actual people.
From a high point of vantage, Ankh-Morpork looked as though someone had tried to achieve in stone and wood an effect normally associated with the pavements outside all-night takeaways.
*
The Librarian rolled his eyes. It was strange, he felt, that so-called intelligent
*
The Supreme Grand Master rapped his gavel for attention. ‘I call the Unique and Supreme Lodge of the Elucidated Brethren to order,’ he intoned. ‘Is the Door of Knowledge sealed fast against heretics and knowlessmen?’
‘Stuck solid,’ said Brother Doorkeeper. ‘It’s the damp. I’ll bring my plane in next week, soon have it—’
‘All right, all right,’ said the Supreme Grand Master testily. ‘Just a yes would have done.’
*
Minor thief Zebbo Mooty has just been incinerated by a dragon.
‘Do you know, a fortune-teller once told me I’d die in my bed, surrounded by grieving great-grandchildren,’ said Mooty. ‘What do you think of that, eh?’
I THINK SHE WAS WRONG .
*
The Patrician nodded.
‘I shall deal with the matter momentarily,’ he said. It was a good word. It always made people hesitate. They were never quite sure whether he meant he’d deal with it now, or just deal with it briefly. And no one ever dared ask.
*
You came to [the Patrician] with a perfectly reasonable complaint. Next thing you knew, you were shuffling out backwards, bowing and scraping, relieved simply to be getting away. You had to hand it to the Patrician, he admitted grudgingly. If you didn’t, he sent men to come and take it away.
The Patrician gave him a sweet smile. ‘Thank you for coming to see me.Don’t hesitate th4 leave.’
The Watch hadn’t liked it, but the plain fact was that the thieves were far better at controlling crime than the Watch had ever been. After all, the Watch had to work twice as hard to cut crime just a little, whereas all the Thieves’ Guild had to do was to work less.
*
The only reason you couldn’t say that Nobby was close to the animal kingdom was that the animal kingdom would get up and walk away.
*
Nobby was a small, bandy-legged man, with a certain resemblance to a chimpanzee who never got invited to tea parties.
*
Sergeant Colon owed thirty years of happy marriage to the fact that Mrs Colon worked all day and Sergeant Colon worked all night. They communicated by means of notes. He got her tea ready before he left at night, she left his breakfast nice and hot in the oven in the mornings. They had three grown-up children, all born, Vimes had assumed, as a result of extremely persuasive handwriting.
*
You could describe Sergeant Colon like this: he was the sort of man who, if he took up a military career, would automatically gravitate to the post of sergeant. You couldn’t imagine him ever being a corporal. Or, for that matter, a captain. If he didn’t take up a military career, then he looked cut out for something like, perhaps, a sausage butcher; some job where a big red face and a tendency to sweat even in frosty weather were practically part of the specification.
*
Every town in the multiverse has a part that is something like Ankh-Morpork’s Shades. It’s a sort of black hole of bred-in-the-brickwork lawlessness. Put it like this: even the criminals were afraid to walk the streets.
*
You need a special kind of mind to rule a city like Ankh-Morpork, and Lord Vetinari had it. But then, he was a special kind of person.
You had to get up very early in the morning to get the better of the Patrician; in fact, it was wiser not to go to bed at all.
But he was popular, in a way. Under his hand, for the first time in a thousand years, Ankh-Morpork operated. It might not be fair or just or particularly democratic, but it worked. It was said that he would tolerate absolutely anything apart from anything that threatened the city † …
Ankh-Morpork!
Brawling city of a hundred thousand souls! And, as the Patrician privately observed, ten times that number of actual people.
From a high point of vantage, Ankh-Morpork looked as though someone had tried to achieve in stone and wood an effect normally associated with the pavements outside all-night takeaways.
*
The Librarian rolled his eyes. It was strange, he felt, that so-called intelligent
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