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where would we be. Oh! I should have learned better. Just as you told me, and as the monks said ... Abbot Zhi was always telling me, 'Lu Zhishen, you have great potential, if only you changed the way you do nearly everything.' He was right, wasn't he —'Deep and Profound,' my eye, better call me 'Head Full of Mud'..."

~Lu Da

— The Water Outlaws by S. L. Huang (13%)

"Oh, not violence," Lu Junyi said. "Not in the general sense. I only mean that as yet, our advancement has not come at the expense of men. But it shall. It must. There is not sufficient room for us otherwise. Our true success will mean some of them lose power... and that will not

come without anger and fear." "Then we should slow its progress. A tidal wave spread over many generations becomes a gentle flow, and either one gets to the end."
"A flow! You mean a trickle." "Even a trickle can wash away a mountain eventually."

— The Water Outlaws by S. L. Huang (4%)

Man was never intended to understand things he meddled with.

— Pyramids by Terry Pratchett (Discworld -- 7) (90%)

The fact is that camels are far more intelligent than dolphins.* They are so much brighter that they soon realized that the most prudent thing any intelligent animal can do, if it would prefer its descendants not to spend a lot of time on a slab with electrodes clamped to their brains or sticking mines on the bottom of ships or being patronized rigid by zoologists, is to make bloody certain humans don't find out about it. So they Long ago plumped for a Lifestyle that, in return for a certain amount of porterage and being prodded with sticks, allowed them adequate food and grooming and the chance to spit in a human's eye and get away with it.

• Never trust a species that grins all the time. It's up to something.

— Pyramids by Terry Pratchett (Discworld -- 7) (51%)

The camel Looked along its nose at Teppic. Its expression made it clear that of all the riders in all the world it would Least Like to ride it, he was right at the top of the List. However, camels look Like that at everyone. Camels have a very democratic approach to the human race. They hate every member of it, without making any distinctions for rank or creed.

— Pyramids by Terry Pratchett (Discworld -- 7) (47%)

It's a fact as immutable as the Third Law of Sod that there is no such thing as a good Grand Vizier. A predilection to cackle and plot is apparently part of the job spec.
High priests tend to get put in the same category. They have to face the implied assumption that no sooner do they get the funny hat than they're issuing strange orders, e.g., princesses tied to rocks for itinerant sea monsters and throwing Little babies in the sea. This is a gross slander. Throughout the history of the Disc most high priests have been serious, pious and conscientious men who have done their best to interpret the wishes of the gods, sometimes disembowelling or flaying alive hundreds of people in a day in order to make sure they're getting it absolutely right.

— Pyramids by Terry Pratchett (Discworld -- 7) (40%)

The breeze of the night was blowing her perfume toward him. Ptraci used scent Like a battering ram.

— Pyramids by Terry Pratchett (Discworld -- 7) (41%)

Younger assassins, who are usually very poor, have very clear ideas about the morality of wealth until they become older assassins, who are usually very rich, when they begin to take the view that injustice has its good points.

— Pyramids by Terry Pratchett (Discworld -- 7) (38%)

He needed something to distract himself. He could send for Ptraci, his favorite handmaiden. She was special. Her singing always cheered him up. Life seemed so much brighter when she stopped.

— Pyramids by Terry Pratchett (Discworld -- 7) (14%)