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All holy piety in public, and all peeled grapes and self-indulgence in private.

Terry Pratchett

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Terry Pratchett
Age: 66 †
Born: 1948
Born: April 28
Died: 2015
Died: March 12
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
Beaconsfield
Buckinghamshire
Terence David John Terry Pratchett
Terence David John Pratchett
Sir Terry Pratchett
Sir Terence David John Pratchett
Indulgence
Private
Holy
Public
Self
Peeled
Grapes
Piety

More quotes by Terry Pratchett

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Classically, very few people have considered that cleanliness is next to godliness. A rank loincloth and hair in an advanced state of matted entanglement have generally been the badges of office of prophets whose injunction to disdain earthly things starts with soap.
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Animals never spend time dividing experience into little bits and speculating about all the bits they've missed. The whole panoply of the universe has been neatly expressed to them as things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks.
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Destiny is important, see, but people go wrong when they think it controls them. It's the other way around.
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Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH,' the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.
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A witch ought never to be frightened in the darkest forest ... because she should be sure in her soul that the most terrifying thing in the forest was her.
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People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it's the other way around.
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In order to have a change of fortune at the last minute, you have to take your fortune to the last minute.
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Consider the situation. There you are, forehead like a set of balconies, worrying about the long-term effects of all this new 'fire' stuff on the environment, you're being chased and eaten by most of the planet's large animals, and suddenly tiny versions of one of the worst of them wanders into the cave and starts to purr.
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Around it are those countries which, according to History, constitute the civilised world ie, a world that can support historians
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They suffered from the terrible delusion that something could be done. They seemed prepared to make the world the way they wanted it or die in the attempt, and the trouble with dying in the attempt was that you died in the attempt.
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… you were so worried about legal and illegal that you never stopped to think about whether it was right or wrong.
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The Auditors fluttered anxiously. And, as always happens in their species when something goes radically wrong and needs fixing instantly, they settled down to try to work how who was to blame.
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He never pays attention, he always knows the answer, and he can never tell you how he knows. We can't keep thrashing him. He is a bad example to the other pupils. There's no educating a smart boy.
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Seeing things a human shouldn't have to see makes us human.
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I would like permission to fetch a note from my mother, sir' Ridcully sighed. 'Rincewind, you once informed me, to my everlasting puzzlement, that you never knew your mother because she ran away before you were born. Distinctly remember writing it down in my diary. Would you like another try?' 'Permission to go and find my mother?'
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Only Ron's dog was watching William. He considered that it had, for a dog, a very offensive and knowing look. A couple of months ago someaone had tried to hand William the old story about there being a dog in the city that could talk. (...) The dog in front of William didn't look as if it could talk, but it DID look as if it would swear.
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I didn't go to university. Didn't even finish A-levels. But I have sympathy for those who did.
Terry Pratchett
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They were small, brightly coloured, happy little creatures who secreted some of the nastiest toxins in the world, which is why the job of looking after the large vivarium where they happily passed their days was given to first-year students, on the basis that if they got things wrong there wouldn't be too much education wasted.
Terry Pratchett
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It's tough at the top. It's tough at the bottom. But in between you could use them for horse-shoes.
Terry Pratchett
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Sometimes I feel that the world is made up of sensible people who know the plot and bloody idiots who don't.
Terry Pratchett