Everything starts somewhere, although many physicists disagree.

Raise the stakes! Always push your luck because no one else would push it for you.

Ninety percent of most magic merely consists of knowing one extra fact.

By the time you've reached your sixties, you do know that one day you will die, and knowing that is at least the beginning of wisdom.

Dwarfs were not a naturally religious species, but in a world where pit props could crack without warning and pockets of fire damp could suddenly explode they'd seen the need for gods as the sort of supernatural equivalent of a hard hat. Besides, when you hit your thumb with an eight-pound hammer it's nice to be able to blaspheme. It takes a very special and strong-minded kind of atheist to jump up and down with their hand clasped under their other armpit and shout, "Oh, random-fluctuations-in-the-space-time-continuum!" or "Aaargh, primitive-and-outmoded-concept on a crutch!

And Sam Vimes thought: Why is Young Sam's nursery full of farmyard animals anyway? Why are his books full of moo-cows and baa-lambs? He is growing up in the city. He will only see them on a plate! They go sizzle!

Knowing that you are going to die is, I suspect, the beginning of wisdom.