Witches Abroad

You can't go around building a better world for people. Only people can build a better world for people. Otherwise it's just a cage. (p. 305)

Magic's far too important to be used for rulin' people. (p. 316)

The footman, recognizing instantly the boundless bad manners of the well-bred, backed away quickly. (p. 262)

She hated everything that predestined people, that fooled them, that made them slightly less than human. (p. 291)

Asking someone to repeat a phrase you'd not only heard very clearly but were also exceedingly angry about was around Defcon II in the lexicon of squabble. (p. 162)

He'd never told people they ought to be happy, and imposed a kind of happiness on them. The invisible people knew that happiness is not the natural state of mankind, and is never achieved from the outside in. (p. 293)

"Good and bad is tricky," she said. "I ain't too certain about where people stand. P'raps what matters is which way you face." (pp. 348-349)

Don't you talk to me about progress. Progress just means bad things happen faster. (p. 305)

Racism was not a problem on the Discworld, because—what with trolls and dwarfs and so on—speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green. (p. 201)

The nobles of Genua had enough experience to know what it means when a ruler says something is not compulsory. (p. 325).

The wages of sin is death but so is the salary of virtue, and at least the evil get to go home early on Fridays. (p. 282)

Genua had once controlled the river mouth and taxed its traffic in a way that couldn't be called piracy because it was done by the city government. (p. 176)

For wolves and pigs and bears, thinking that they're human is a tragedy. For a cat, it's an experience. (p. 268).

"Listen, happy endings is fine if they turn out happy," said Granny, glaring at the sky. "But you can't make 'em for other people. Like the only way you could make a happy marriage is by cuttin' their heads off as soon as they say ‘I do', yes? You can't make happiness..."

You can be as self-assertive as you like, I said, just so long as you do what you're told. (p. 20)

If you wanted to get anywhere in this world—and she'd decided, right at the start, that she wanted to get as far as it was possible to go—you wore names lightly, and you took power anywhere you found it. She had buried three husbands, and at least two of them had already been dead. (p. 14)

People are riddled by Doubt. It is the engine that drives them through their lives. It is the elastic band in the little model airplane of their soul, and they spend their time winding it up until it knots. Early morning is the worst time—there's that little moment of panic in case You have drifted away in the night and something else has moved in. This never happened to Granny Weatherwax. She went straight from fast asleep to instant operation on all six cylinders. She never needed to find herself because she always knew who was doing the looking. (p. 93)

Granny Weatherwax didn't like maps. She felt instinctively that they sold the landscape short. (p. 27)

It's a strange thing about determined seekers-after-wisdom that, no matter where they happen to be, they'll always seek that wisdom which is a long way off. Wisdom is one of the few things that looks bigger the further away it is. (p. 32)

The Yen Buddhists are the richest religious sect in the universe. They hold that the accumulation of money is a great evil and a burden to the soul. They therefore, regardless of personal hazard, see it as their unpleasant duty to acquire as much as possible in order to reduce the risk to innocent people. (p. 125)

Greebo turned upon Granny Weatherwax a yellow-eyed stare of self-satisfied malevolence, such as cats always reserve for people who don't like them, and purred. Greebo was possibly the only cat who could snigger in purr. (p. 48)

It's a big responsibility, fairy godmothering. Knowing when to stop, I mean. People whose wishes get granted often don't turn out to be very nice people. So should you give them what—or what they need? (p. 10).

But then...it used to be so simple, once upon a time.