Title: Wit and Wisdom of Discworld
Author(s): Terry Pratchett (original author of the text), Stephen Briggs (he selected quotes)
Release year: 2007
Publisher: Doubleday
Why in Database: This book is a collection of the best (according to the selection, Stephen Briggs) fragments from all discworld books released before publication of this book, that is from The Colour of Magic to Making Money. Except for two fragments from the Small Gods (which are so full of turtle elements that there had to be a strict selection for the purposes of a note about them), all the other quotes had already appeared in TurtleDex, in the entries about individual books. The book is divided into chapters, quotations from one book are one chapter.
There was, for example, the theory that A’Tuin had come from nowhere and would continue at a uniform crawl, or steady gait, into nowhere, for all time. This theory was popular among academics.
An alternative, favored by those of a religious persuasion, was that A’Tuin was crawling from the Birthplace to the Time of Mating, as were all the stars in the sky which were, obviously, also carried by giant turtles. When they arrived they would briefly and passionately mate, for the first and only time, and from that fiery union new turtles would be born to carry a new pattern of worlds. This was known as the Big Bang hypothesis.
There was no analogy for the way in which Great A’Tuin the world turtle moved against the galactic night. When you are ten thousand miles long, your shell pocked with meteor craters and frosted with comet ice, there is absolutely nothing you can realistically be like except yourself.
So Great A’Tuin swam slowly through the interstellar deeps like the largest turtle there has ever been, carrying on its carapace the four huge elephants that bore on their backs the vast, glittering waterfall-fringed circle of the Discworld, which exists either because of some impossible blip on the curve of probability or because the gods enjoy a joke as much as anyone.
He knew about tortoises. There were tortoises in the Old Kingdom. They could be called a lot of things—vegetarians, patient, thoughtful, even extremely diligent and persistent sex-maniacs—but never, up until now, fast. Fast was a word particularly associated with tortoises because they were not it.
Eventually Great A ’Tuin would reach the end of the universe. Eventually the stars would go out. Eventually Nobby might have a bath, although that would probably involve a radical re-thinking of the nature of Time.
Small Gods (the first two quotes are not present in our note) :
“It’s a big bull,” said the tortoise.
“The very likeness of the Great God Om in one of his worldly incarnations!” said Brutha
proudly. “And you say you’re him?”
“I haven’t been well lately,”
“How should I know? I don’t know!” lied the tortoise.
“But you…you’re omnicognisant,” said Brutha.
“That doesn’t mean I know everything.”
Brutha bit his lip. “Um. Yes. It does.”
Mountains rise and fall, and under them the Turtle swims onward. Men live and die, and the Turtle Moves. Empires grow and crumble, and the Turtle Moves. Gods come and go, and still the Turtle Moves. The Turtle Moves.”
The Prophet Brutha said that Om helps those who help one another.”
“And does he?”
“To be honest, there are a number of opinions of what was meant.”
“How many?”
“About one hundred and sixty, since the Schism of ten-thirty A.M., February twenty-third. That
was when the Re-United Free Chelonianists (Hubward Convocation) split from the Re-United Free
Chelonianists (Rimward Convocation). It was rather serious.”
“Blood spilled?” said Agnes. She wasn’t really interested, but it took her mind off whatever
might be waking up in a minute.
“No, but there were fisticuffs and a deacon had ink spilled on him.”
The Last Hero (in the book, the second quote is longer, but we selected only this turtle fragment):
The place where the story happened was a world on the back of four elephants perched on the shell of a giant turtle. That’s the advantage of space. It’s big enough to hold practically anything, and so, eventually, it does.
People think that it is strange to have a turtle ten thousand miles long and an elephant more than two thousand miles tall, which just shows that the human brain is ill-adapted for thinking and was probably originally designed for cooling the blood. It believes mere size is amazing.
There’s nothing amazing about size. Turtles are amazing, and elephants are quite astonishing. But the fact that there’s a big turtle is far less amazing than the fact that there is a turtle anywhere.
“I don’t know,” said Carrot. “You know, I’m not sure I ever really believed it before. You know… about the turtle and the elephants and everything. Seeing it all like this makes me feel very… very…”
Author: XYuriTT
