Rat Tails Quotes & Sayings

Rats had featured largely in the history of Ankh-Morpork. Shortly before the Patrician came to power there was a terrible plague of rats. The city council countered it by offering twenty pence for every rat tail. This did, for a week or two, reduce the number of rats - and then people were suddenly queing up with tails, the city treasury was being drained, and no one seemed to be doing much work. And there still seemed to be a lot of rats around. Lord Vetinari had listened carefully while the problem was explained, and had solved the thing with one memorable phrase which said a lot about him, about the folly of bounty offers, and about the natural instinct of Ankh-Morporkians in any situation involving money: Tax the rat farms. — Terry Pratchett

The ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obstructs the understanding. — Francis Bacon

With age comes wisdom, but sometimes age comes alone. — Oscar Wilde

I don't think we have very good records about what they were thinking except, as I pointed out earlier today, that they did invent our political system. — David R. Brower

Early on I saw the repression and idolatry of Stalinism, and when it cracked, I was open to religion again. — Lionel Blue

Generally, after three dates one of three things took place: 1) he'd express his lack of interest with a silent fade-out that made me go insane with anxiety; 2) I'd express my lack of interest with an overlong and tortured "it's not you, it's me" e-mail; 3) we'd devolve into a sexual entanglement that either was or wasn't physically satisfying but invariably thrived on noncommunication. After a while it seemed that everyone I knew was tangled in several entanglements at a time, as if we were all becoming intertwined, like a giant rat king, our tails a knotted mass, our mouths gasping for air. — Kate Bolick

To understand humanity, you must first understand yourself. — Debasish Mridha