Quotes from Men at Arms: The Play

Terry Pratchett ·  208 pages

Rating: (29K votes)


“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Men at Arms: The Play


“Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Men at Arms: The Play


“We're dealing here," said Vimes, "With a twisted mind."
"Oh, no! You think so?"
"Yes."
"But... no... you can't be right. Because Nobby was with us all the time."
"Not Nobby," said Vimes testily. "Whatever he might do to a dragon, I doubt if he'd make it explode. There's stranger people in this world than Corporal Nobbs, my lad."
Carrot's expression slid into a rictus of intrigued horror.
"Gosh," he said.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Men at Arms: The Play


“Silverfish looked down.
"Oh. Are you a dwarf?"
Cuddy gave him a blank stare.
"Are you a giant?" He said.
"Me? Of course not!"
"Ah. Then I must be a dwarf, yes.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Men at Arms: The Play


“It was the way he wore the place. You expected him any moment to break into the kind of song that has suspicious rhymes and phrases like "my kind of town" and "I wanna be a part of it" in it; the kind of song where people dance in the street and give the singer apples and join in and a dozen lowly matchgirls suddenly show amazing choreographical ability and everyone acts like cheery lovable citizens instead of the murderous, evil-minded, self-centered people they suspect themselves to be. But the point was that if Carrot had erupted into a song, people WOULD have joined in. Carrot could have jollied up a circle of standing stones to form up behind him and do a rumba.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Men at Arms: The Play



“Right!"
"Right!"
"You can get there!"
"I can get there!"
"You're a natural at counting to two!"
"I'm a nat'ral at counting to two!"
"If you can count to two, you can count to anything!"
"If I can count to two, I can count to anything!"
"And then the world is your mollusc!"
"My mollusc! What's a mollusc?”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Men at Arms: The Play


About the author

Terry Pratchett
Born place: in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, England, The United Kingdom
Born date April 28, 1948
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“The more we lose, the more we become the survivors.”
― Carrie Ryan, quote from The Dead-Tossed Waves


“Mon cher ami, pour moi un homme amoureux est rayé du nombre des vivants. Il devient idiot, pas seulement idiot, mais dangereux. Je cesse, avec les gens qui m'aiment d'amour, ou qui le prétendent, toute relation intime, parce qu'ils m'ennuient d'abord, et puis parce qu'ils me sont suspects comme un chien enragé qui peut avoir une crise. Je les mets donc en quarantaine morale jusqu'à ce que leur maladie soit passée. Ne l'oubliez point. Je sais bien que chez vous l'amour n'est autre chose qu'une espèce d'appétit, tandis que chez moi ce serait, au contraire, une espèce de... de... de communion des âmes qui n'entre pas dans la religion des hommes. Vous en comprenez la lettre, et moi l'esprit.”
― Guy de Maupassant, quote from Bel-Ami


“I'm William, but you can call me Sexy. Everyone does.”
― Gena Showalter, quote from The Darkest Kiss


“It’s not a confession if no one reads it. It’s just an unshared secret.”
― Colleen Hoover, quote from Confess


“Ali čovek zaboravlja stvarnost i pamti samo reci. Što je reči više upamtio, to ga pametnijim smatrajunjegovi drugovi. On gleda velike transformacije sveta, ali ih ne vidi onako kako su bile sagledane od prvog čoveka koji se suočio sa stvarnošću.

Radije tražite to Bezimeno u sebi, to što nadolazi dok mu se obraćam. Ono ne opaža moje reči, već realnost u meni, čiji je deo. To je atman, koji čuje mene, a ne moje reči. Sve ostalo je nestvarno. Definisati znači izgubiti. Bezimeno je suština svih stvari. Bezimeno je nesaznatljivo, moćnije čak i od samog Brame. Stvari prolaze, ali suština ostaje.

Snovi bivstva su san u formama. Forme prolaze, nestaju, ali bivstvo ostaje; i sanja nove snove. Čovek tim snovima daje imena i zamišlja da je uhvatio bivstvo samo, a ne zna da samo priziva privide.

PONEKAD, MOŽDA, POJAVI SE SANJAR KOJI JE SVESTAN DA SANJA. ON MOŽDA KONTROLIŠE DELIĆ SUPSTANCE SNA, U STANJU JE DA TOM SUPSTANCOM RASPOLAŽE PO SVOJOJ VOLJI, ILI MOŽDA USPEVA DA SE PONEKAD DELIMIČNO PROBUDI, DOSPEVAJUĆI TAKO DO POVEĆANE SAMOSPOZNAJE. AKO IZABERE PUT SAMOSPOZNAJE, NJEGOVA SLAVA ĆE BITI VELIKA, KROZ SVE VEKOVE ON ĆE SIJATI KAO ZVEZDA. ALI AKO SE, MEĐUTIM, OPREDELI ZA STAZU TANTRI, GDE SE SPAJAJU SAMSARA I NIRVANA, GDE SE SVET SHVATA ALI SE ISTOVREMENO U NJEMU ŽIVI, ON ĆE BITI JEDAN OD MOĆNIH MEĐU SANJARIMA. MOĆ SVOJU ON MOŽE UPOTREBITI ZA ZLO ILI ZA DOBRO.

Živeti u Samsari, međutim, znači biti podložan uticaju moćnih sanjara. Ako oni moć koriste za dobro, nastaju zlatna vremena. Ako je koriste za zlo, nastaju mračna vremena. San se može preobraziti u košmar.

Čovek mora prvo da odradi opterećenja svoje karme, svog mesa, tela, pre nego što dostigne prosvetljenje.

U svetlosti večnih istina, kažu mudraci, patnja je kao ništa; u terminima Samsare, kažu mudraci, ona vodi dobru.

Bezimeno, čiji smo deo svi mi, sanja formu. Koji je najviši atribut ijednoj formi dostupan? Lepota. Bezimeno je, dakle, umetnik. Problem, dakle, nije u oblasti dileme dobro - zlo, nego u estetskoj oblasti. Boriti se protiv onih koji su među sanjarima moćni a koji svoju moć koriste za zlo ili za ružnoću, ne znači boriti se za ono čemu su nas mudraci podučili da je besmisleno u terminima Samsare ili Nirvane, već znači boriti se da san bude sanjan, simetrično, ritmično, sa poentom i kontrapunktom, izbalansirano, tako da postane lep kao umetničko delo.”
― Roger Zelazny, quote from Lord of Light


Interesting books

Hallowed
(64.2K)
Hallowed
by Cynthia Hand
Only Forward
(4.1K)
Only Forward
by Michael Marshall Smith
Cut
(50.8K)
Cut
by Patricia McCormick
Numbers
(20.7K)
Rilla of Ingleside
(32.8K)
Rilla of Ingleside
by L.M. Montgomery
Ceremony
(14.5K)
Ceremony
by Leslie Marmon Silko

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.