Samuel Vimes Quotes

Something Vimes had learned as a young guard drifted up from memory. If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you entirely at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you're going to die. So they'll talk. They'll gloat.
They'll watch you squirm. They'll put off the moment of murder like another man will put off a good cigar.
So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word. ~ Terry Pratchett

The bestselling novel taking the Ankh-Morpork literary world by storm was dedicated to Commander Samuel Vimes.
The title of the book was Pride and Extreme Prejudice. ~ Terry Pratchett

The major sin is the sin of being born. ~ Samuel Butler

Gratitude is a species of justice. ~ Samuel Johnson

A difficulty for every solution. ~ Herbert Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel

We have less reason to be surprised or offended when we find others differ from us in opinions because we very often differ from ourselves. ~ Samuel Johnson

A Duke couldn't have the arse hanging out of his trousers when meeting foreign diplomats. Actually even plain old Sam Vimes never had the arse hanging out of his trousers, either, but no one would have actually started a war if he had. ~ Terry Pratchett

When two Eglishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather. ~ Samuel Johnson

We are unreasonably desirous to separate the goods of life from those evils which Providence has connected with them, and to catch advantages without paying the price at which they are offered to us. Every man wishes to be rich, but very few have the powers necessary to raise a sudden fortune, either by new discoveries, or by superiority of skill in any necessary employment; and among lower understandings many want the firmness and industry requisite to regular gain and gradual acquisitions. ~ Samuel Johnson

In civilized society we all depend upon each other, and our happiness is very much owing to the good opinion of mankind. ~ Samuel Johnson

If you're successful, don't crow. If you're defeated, don't croak. ~ Samuel Chadwick

She came apart, and Zeke let go, driving into her without restraint, thrilling to the cry that escaped her throat. Her body convulsed around him, a roaring filled his ears.
He splintered into a billion pieces.
His heart, made of thinnest glass, shattered. ~ Barbara Samuel

They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose, Nor spake, nor moved their eyes; It had been strange, even in a dream, To have seen those dead men rise. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I wandered in my mind, slowly, noting every detail of the labyrinth, its paths as familiar as those of my garden and yet ever new, as empty as the heart could wish or alive with strange encounters. ~ Samuel Beckett

When there is no hope, there can be no endeavor. ~ Samuel Johnson

People of little understanding are most apt to be angry when their sense is called into question. ~ Samuel Richardson

On Second Street, corner of Norris Alley, was a commodious house, known as the Slate-roof House, and built before 1700 by James Porteus for Samuel Carpenter, who sold it to Penn. ~ J. Thomas Scharf

I exhort you and beseech you in the bowels of Christ, faint not, weary not. There is a great necessity of heaven; you must have it. All other things, as houses, lands, children, husband, friends, country, credit, health, wealth, honour, may be let go; but heaven is your one thing necessary, the good part that shall not be taken from you. See that you buy the field where the pearl is. Sell all, and make a purchase of salvation. Think it not easy; for it is a steep ascent to eternal glory; many are lying dead by the way, that were slain with security. ~ Samuel Rutherford

ABDITIVE (A'BDITIVE) adj.[from abdo, to hide.] That which has the power or quality of hiding.Dict. ~ Samuel Johnson

Language is the work of man, of a being from whom permanence and stability can not be derived. ~ Samuel Johnson

I shall not speak of my sufferings. Cowering deep down among them I feel nothing. It is there I die, unbeknown to my stupid flesh. That which is seen, that which cries and writhes, my witless remains. Somewhere in the turmoil thought struggles on, it too wide of the mark. It too seeks me, as it always has, where I am not to be found. ~ Samuel Beckett

Wheresoe'er I turn my view,
All is strange, yet nothing new:
Endless labor all along,
Endless labor to be wrong:
Phrase that Time has flung away;
Uncouth words in disarray,
Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet,
Ode, and elegy, and sonnet. ~ Samuel Johnson

The composition of Shakespeare is a forest, in which oaks extend in the air, interspersed sometimes with weeds and brambles, and sometimes giving shelting to myrtles and to roses; filling the eye with awful pomp, and gratifying the mind with endless diversity. ~ Samuel Johnson

And at the thought of the punishments Youdi might inflict upon me I was seized by such a mighty fit of laughter that I shook, with mightly silent laughter and my features composed in their wonted sadness and calm. But my whole body shook, and even my legs, so that I had to lean against a tree, or against a bush, when the fit came on me standing, my umbrella being no longer sufficient to keep me from falling. Strange laughter truly, and no doubt misnamed. ~ Samuel Beckett

He has spent his life best who has enjoyed it most. God will take care that we do not enjoy it any more than is good for us. ~ Samuel Butler

Faults and defects every work of man must have. ~ Samuel Johnson

I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of the earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote. ~ Samuel Johnson

Whoever shall review his life, will find that the whole tenor of his conduct has been determined by some accident of no apparent moment. ~ Samuel Johnson

The pendulum oscillates between these two terms: Suffering-that opens a window on the real and is the main condition of the artistic experience, and Boredom ... that must be considered as the most tolerable because the most durable of human evils. ~ Samuel Beckett

And I seemed to see myself ageing as swiftly as a day-fly. But the idea of ageing was not exactly the one which offered itself to me. And what I saw was more like a crumbling, a frenzied collapsing of all that had always protected me from all I was always condemned to be. ~ Samuel Beckett

The disturbers of happiness are our desires, our griefs, and our fears. ~ Samuel Johnson

Carved with figures strange and sweet, All made out of the carver's brain. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Life, however short, is made still shorter by waste of time. ~ Samuel Johnson

When once the forms of civility are violated, there remains little hope of return to kindness or decency. ~ Samuel Johnson

What if two negatives make an affirmative ... does it follow that two nobodies shall be some body? ~ Samuel Laman Blanchard

From now on, the technology companies that succeed will be those that have developed skills at listening and a sophisticated understanding of their customers' industries. ~ Samuel J. Palmisano

Those who attempt nothing themselves think every thing easily performed, and consider the unsuccessful always as criminal. ~ Samuel Johnson

Is it not high time for the people of this country to explicitly declare whether they will be free men or slaves. It is an important question which aught to be decided. It concerns more than anything in this life. The salvation of our souls is interested in this event. For wherever tyranny is established, immorality of every kind comes in like a torrent, it is in the interest of tyrants to reduce the people to ignorance and vice. ~ Samuel Adams

If you can strike the cord of consistency on the guitar of life, the world will dance to your music of greatness ~ Osho Samuel Adetunji

I am mad again, he thought. Tears brimmed. He swallowed in a tightened throat. I don't want to be. I'm tired, I'm tired and horny, I'm so tired I can't make sense out of any of it and my mind won't work right half the time I try. I'm thirsty. My head's all filled with kapok coffee wouldn't clear. Still, I wish I had some. Where am I going, what am I doing, stumbling in this smoking graveyard? It's not the pain; only that the pain keeps going on. He tried to let all his muscles go and stepped aimlessly from sidewalk to gutter, his mouth dryer and dryer and dryer. Well, he thought, if it hurts, it hurts. It's only pain. ~ Samuel R. Delany

It is not often that any man can have so much knowledge of another, as is necessary to make instruction useful. ~ Samuel Johnson

Then Carrot said, "It's better to light a candle than curse the darkness, captain. That's what they say."
"What?" Vimes sudden rage was like a thunderclap. "Who says that? When has that ever been true? It's never been true! It's the kind of thing people without power say to make it all seem less bloody awful, but it's just words, it never makes any difference - ~ Terry Pratchett

Stothard learned the art of combining colors by closely studying butterflies wings; he would often say that no one knew what he owed to these tiny insects. A burnt stick and a barn door served Wilkie in lieu of pencil and canvas. ~ Samuel Smiles

Be drug-free and smoke some crack. ~ Samuel Goldwyn

How difficult it is to speak of the moon and not lose one's head, the witless moon. ~ Samuel Beckett

Having integrity ... means being completely true to what is inside you - to what you know is right ... what you feel you must do, regardless of the immediate cost of sacrifice ... to be honorable and to behave decently. ~ Samuel Goldwyn

The third, the dark, was a flux of forms, a perpetual coming together and falling asunder of forms. The light contained the docile elements of a new manifold, the world of the body broken up into the pieces of a toy; the half light, states of peace. But the dark neither elements nor states, nothing but forms becoming and crumbling into the fragments of a new becoming, without love or hate or any intelligible principle of change. Here there was nothing but commotion and the pure forms of commotion. Here he was not free, but a mote in the dark of absolute freedom. He did not move, he was a point in the ceaseless unconditioned generalization and passing away of line. ~ Samuel Beckett

From success you get a lot of things, but not that great inside thing that love brings you. ~ Samuel Goldwyn

A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear,
A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet or relief,
In word, or sigh, or tear. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Bah, the latest news, the latest news is not the last. ~ Samuel Beckett