The Battle of Koom Valley is the only one known to history where both sides ambushed each other. |
The class was learning about some revolt in which some peasants had wanted to stop being peasants and, since the nobles had won, had stopped being peasants really quickly. |
The consensus seemed to be that if really large numbers of men were sent to storm the mountain, then enough might survive the rocks to take the citadel. This is essentially the basis of all military thinking |
The duke had a mind that ticked like a clock and, like a clock, it regularly went cuckoo. |
The Gods Of The Disc have never bothered much about judging the souls of the dead, and so people only go to hell if thats where they believe, in their deepest hearts, that they deserve to go. Which they can't do if they don't know about it. This explains why it is important to shoot missionaries on sight |
The intelligence of the creature known as a crowd, is the square root of the number of people in it. |
The little flickering part of his brain that was still sparking coherent thought through the fog of mind-numbing terror that filled Colon's head was telling him that he was so far out of his depth that the fish had lights on their noses |
The Monks of Cool, whose tiny and exclusive monastery is hidden in a really cool and laid-back valley in the lower Ramtops, have a passing-out test for a novice. He is taken into a room full of all types of clothing and asked: Yo, my son, which of these is the most stylish thing to wear? And the correct answer is: Hey, whatever I select. |
The pen is mightier than the sword if the sword is very short, and the pen is very sharp |
The place looked as though it had been visited by Gengiz Cohen (footnote: hence the term "wholesale destruction") |
The plain fact of the matter was that the Disc was manifestly traversing space on the back of a giant turtle, and the gods had a habit of going round to atheists houses and smashing their windows. |
The point is that descriptive writing is very rarely entirely accurate and during the reign of Olaf Quimby II as Patrician of Ankh-Morpork some legislation was passed in a determined attempt to “put a stop to this sort of thing and introduce some honesty to reporting”. Thus, if a legend told of a notable hero that “all men spoke of his prowess” any bard who valued his life would hastily add “except for a couple of people in his home village who thought he was a loony, and quite a lot of other people who had never really heard of him.” Poetic simile was strictly limited to statements like: “His mighty steed was fast as the wind, on a fairly calm day, say about Force Three,” any loose talk about a beloved having a face that could launch a thousand ships would have to be backed by evidence that the object of desire did indeed own a very large seaport. Patrician Olaf II was eventually killed during an experiment conducted in the palace grounds to prove the disputed accuracy of the proverb “The Pen is mightier than the Sword”. In his memory it was decided that the proverb would from now on include the phrase: “only if the Sword is very small and the Pen very sharp.” |
The Quantum Weather Butterfly ( Papilio Tempestae ) is an undistinguished yellow color, its outstanding feature is its ability to create weather. This presumably began as a survival trait, since even an extremely hungry bird would find itself inconvenienced by a nasty localized tornado ( usually about 6 inches across ). From there it possibly became a secondary sexual characteristic, like the plumage of birds. Look at *me*, the male says, flapping his wings lazily in the canopy of the rain forest. I may be an undistinguished yellow color but in a fortnight's time, a thousand miles away, Freak Gales Cause Road Chaos. This is the butterfly of the storm |
The shortest unit of time in the multiverse is the New York Second, defined as the period of time between the traffic lights turning green and the cab behind you honking. |
The three rules of the Librarians of Time and Space are: 1) Silence; 2) Books must be returned no later than the date last shown; and 3) Do not interfere with the nature of causality. |