Fortune favours the brave, sir," said Carrot cheerfully.

"Good. Good. Pleased to hear it, captain. What is her position vis a vis heavily armed, well prepared and excessively manned armies?"

"Oh, no–one's ever heard of Fortune favouring them, sir."

"According to General Tacticus, it's because they favour themselves," said Vimes. He opened the battered book. Bits of paper and string indicated his many bookmarks. "In fact, men, the general has this to say about ensuring against defeat when outnumbered, out–weaponed and outpositioned. It is..." he turned the page, "'Don't Have a Battle.'"

"Sounds like a clever man," said Jenkins. He pointed to the yellow horizon.

"See all that stuff in the air?" he said. "What do you think that is?"

"Mist?" said Vimes.

"Hah, yes. Klatchian mist! It's a sandstorm! The sand blows about all the time. Vicious stuff. If you want to sharpen your sword, just hold it up in the air."

"Oh."

"And it's just as well because otherwise you'd see Mount Gebra. And below it is what they call the Fist of Gebra. It's a town but there's a bloody great fort, walls thirty feet thick. 's like a big city all by itself. 's got room inside for thousands of armed men, war elephants, battle camels, everything. And if you saw that, you'd want me to turn round right now. Whats your famous general got to say about it, eh?"

"I think I saw something..." said Vimes. He flicked to another page. "Ah, yes, he says, 'After the first battle of Sto Lat, I formulated a policy which has stood me in good stead in other battles. It is this: if the enemy has an impregnable stronghold, see he stays there.'"

"That's a lot of help," said Jenkins.

Vimes slipped the book into a pocket.

"So, Constable Visit, there's a god on our side, is there?"

"Certainly, sir."

"But probably also a god on their side as well?"

"Very likely, sir. There's a god on every side."

"Let's hope they balance out, then.


Terry Pratchett

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RARE, said Death.
TERRY PRATCHETT
That's why it's always worth having a few philosophers around the place. One minute it's all is trut...
TERRY PRATCHETT
Twoflower was a tourist, the first ever seen on the discworld. Tourist, Rincewind had decided, meant...
TERRY PRATCHETT
Everything starts somewhere, though many physicists disagree. But people have always been dimly awar...
TERRY PRATCHETT
The living often don’t appreciate how complicated the world looks when you are dead, because while...
TERRY PRATCHETT
Hello, inner child, I'm the inner babysitter!
TERRY PRATCHETT
I like writing. I get cranky when I can't. Yes, I write books back to back, and I work very hard...
TERRY PRATCHETT
The baby boomers are getting older, and will stay older for longer. And they will run right into the...
TERRY PRATCHETT
We have been so successful in the past century at the art of living longer and staying alive that we...
TERRY PRATCHETT
I regarded finding I had a form of Alzheimer's as an insult and decided to do my best to marshal...
TERRY PRATCHETT
The bravest person I've ever met was a young boy going through massive amounts of treatment for ...
TERRY PRATCHETT
Evolution was far more thrilling to me than the biblical account. Who would not rather be a rising a...
TERRY PRATCHETT
My advice is this. For Christ's sake, don't write a book that is suitable for a kid of 12 ye...
TERRY PRATCHETT
You can't build a plot out of jokes. You need tragic relief. And you need to let people know tha...
TERRY PRATCHETT
He was the sort of person who stood on mountaintops during thunderstorms in wet copper armour shouti...
TERRY PRATCHETT
Christ managed to boil down an awful lot of commandments to a few very simple rules for living. It&#...
TERRY PRATCHETT
My experience in Amsterdam is that cyclists ride where the hell they like and aim in a state of rage...
TERRY PRATCHETT
And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things.
TERRY PRATCHETT
Everybody has somebody. It could be a friend, a lover, a spouse, a writing partner, or even That One...
TERRY PRATCHETT
I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are good people and bad people. You'r...
TERRY PRATCHETT
But what's worth more than gold?"

"Practically everything. You, for example. Gold is heav...
TERRY PRATCHETT
Gnomes live ten times faster than humans. They're harder to see than a high-speed mouse. That's on...
TERRY PRATCHETT
She walked quickly through the darkness with the frank stride of someone who was at least certain th...
TERRY PRATCHETT
My experience in Amsterdam is that cyclists ride where the hell they like and aim in a state of rage...
TERRY PRATCHETT
There was this about vampires : they could never look scruffy. Instead, they were... what was the wo...
TERRY PRATCHETT
Steal five dollars and you're a common thief. Steal thousands and you're either the government or a ...
TERRY PRATCHETT
Of course I'm sane, when trees start talking to me, I don't talk back.
TERRY PRATCHETT
The trouble is you can shut your eyes but you can’t shut your mind.
TERRY PRATCHETT
Nanny Ogg looked under her bed in case there was a man there. Well, you never knew your luck.
TERRY PRATCHETT
Ginger: You know what the greatest tragedy is in the whole world?... It's all the people who never f...
TERRY PRATCHETT
There's a door."
"Where does it go?"
"It stays where it is, I think.
TERRY PRATCHETT
Many people could say things in a cutting way, Nanny knew. But Granny Weatherwax could listen...
TERRY PRATCHETT
No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away...
TERRY PRATCHETT
The enemy isn't men, or women, it's bloody stupid people and no one has the right to be stupid.
TERRY PRATCHETT
In fact, the mere act of opening the box will determine the state of the
cat, although in this ...
TERRY PRATCHETT
The entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from...
TERRY PRATCHETT
Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves ...
TERRY PRATCHETT
The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who t...
TERRY PRATCHETT
I got quite annoyed after the Haiti earthquake. A baby was taken from the wreckage and people said i...
TERRY PRATCHETT
In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.
TERRY PRATCHETT
No one's policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head ...
TERRY PRATCHETT
Blessings be on this house," Granny said, perfunctorily. It was always a good opening remark for a w...
TERRY PRATCHETT
At such times the universe gets a little closer to us. They are strange times, times of beginnings a...
TERRY PRATCHETT
Just erotic. Nothing kinky. It's the difference between using a feather and using a chicken.
TERRY PRATCHETT
I saved a man's life once," said Granny. "Special medicine, twice a day. Boiled water with a bit of ...
TERRY PRATCHETT
The Monks of Cool, whose tiny and exclusive monastery is hidden in a really cool and laid-back valle...
TERRY PRATCHETT
She had heard it said that, before you could understand anybody, you needed to walk a mile in their ...
TERRY PRATCHETT
His progress through life was hampered by his tremendous sense of his own ignorance, a disability wh...
TERRY PRATCHETT
Just because someone's a member of an ethnic minority doesn't mean they're not a nasty small-minded ...
TERRY PRATCHETT
Maurice watched them argue again. Humans, eh? Think they're lords of creation. Not like us cats. We ...
TERRY PRATCHETT
The only superstition I have is that I must start a new book on the same day that I finish the last ...
TERRY PRATCHETT
Dickens, as you know, never got round to starting his home page.
TERRY PRATCHETT
Nothing I can say or devise, and nothing anybody else can say or devise, is going to be perfect.
TERRY PRATCHETT
The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it's as though you always get in ten minutes af...
TERRY PRATCHETT
Seven hundred thousand people who have dementia in this country are not heard. I'm fortunate; I ...
TERRY PRATCHETT
It was one of those problematic occasions with long silences, sporadic coughs, and people saying iso...
TERRY PRATCHETT
Personally, I think the best motto for an educational establishment is: 'Or Would You Rather Be ...
TERRY PRATCHETT
Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.Elves are fantasti...
TERRY PRATCHETT
Rincewind had been told that death was just like going into another room. The difference is, when yo...
TERRY PRATCHETT
The point is that descriptive writing is very rarely entirely accurate and during the reign of Olaf ...
TERRY PRATCHETT
Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves ar...
TERRY PRATCHETT
"Why does everyone run toward a blood curdling scream?" mumbled the Senior Wrangler. "It is contrary...
TERRY PRATCHETT
A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.
TERRY PRATCHETT
Sham Harga had run a succesful eatery for many years by always smiling, never extending credit, and ...
TERRY PRATCHETT
It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If ...
TERRY PRATCHETT
It could not be happening because this sort of thing did not happen. Any contradictory evidence coul...
TERRY PRATCHETT
An education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs ...
TERRY PRATCHETT
A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.
TERRY PRATCHETT
Stupid men are often capable of things the clever would not dare to contemplate...
TERRY PRATCHETT
The consensus seemed to be that if really large numbers of men were sent to storm the mountain, then...
TERRY PRATCHETT
For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) ...
TERRY PRATCHETT
Give a man a fire and he's warm for the day. But set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his l...
TERRY PRATCHETT
In the begining there was nothing, and it exploded.
TERRY PRATCHETT
Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off.
TERRY PRATCHETT
The truth may be out there, but the lies are inside your head.
TERRY PRATCHETT
God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of his own devising, which migh...
TERRY PRATCHETT