Not a muscle moved on Death's face, because he hadn't got any.

***

"I remember," said one of the oldest mayflies,"when all this was fields, as far as you could see."
The younger mayflies looked around.
"It's still fields," one of them ventured, after a polite interval.
"I remember when it was better fields," said the old mayfly sharply.

***

Belief is one of the most powerful organic forces in the multiverse. It may not be able to move mountains, exactly. But it can create someone who can.

***

Windle shook his head sadly. Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind.

***

Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it's wrong. No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.

***

No one was avoiding him, it was just that an apparent random Brownian motion was gently moving everyone away.

***

"Inside Every Living Person is a Dead Person Waiting to Get Out..."

***

He said that there was death and taxes, and taxes was worse, because at least death didn't happen to you every year.

***

"...it took [Ridcully] several minutes to understand any new idea put to him, and this is a very valuable trait in a leader, because anything anyone is still trying to explain to you after two minutes is probably important and anything they give up after a mere minute or so is almost certainly something they shouldn't have been bothering you with in the first place."

***

They said that dying was just like going to sleep, although of course if you weren't careful bits of you could rot and drop off.

***

Flitworth:"And your first name? Don't tell me you haven't got one of those too. You've got to be a Bill or a Tom or a Bruce or one of those names."
Death: YES.
Flitworth:"What?"
Death: ONE OF THOSE.
Flitworth:"Which one?"
Death: ER. THE FIRST ONE?

***

Mrs. Evadne Cake was a medium, verging on small.

***

The Archchancellor was not the kind of man who takes a special pleasure in being brusque and rude to women. Or, to put it another way, he was brusque and rude to everyone, regardless of sex, which was equality of a sort.

***

Bursar:"It can't be intelligent, can it?"
Dean:"All it's doing is moving around slowly and eating things."
Ridcully:"Put a pointy hat on it and it'd be a faculty member."

***

People have believed for hundreds of years that newts in a well mean that the water's fresh and drinkable, and in all that time never asked themselves whether the newts got out to go to the lavatory.

***

"Me? But I can't stand heights!"
"I thought you could turn into a bat?"
"Yeah, but a very nervous one!"

***

Ridcully was simple-minded. This doesn't mean stupid. It just meant that he could only think properly about things if he cut away all the complicated bits around the edges.

***

"Bonsai!"

***

"What is this thing, anyway?" said the Dean, inspecting the implement in his hands.
"It's called a shovel," said the Senior Wrangler."I've seen the gardeners use them. You stick the sharp end in the ground. Then it gets a bit technical."

***