Terry Pratchett Quotes

We are the playthings of the gods.

Open your mouth and shut your eyes and see what Zeus will send you.

There are times when we can feel destiny close around us like a fist around a doorknob. Sure, we can resist. But a knob that won't turn, a door that sticks and never budges, is a nuisance to the gods. The gods may kick in the jamb. Worse, they may walk away in disgust, leaving us to hang dumbly from our tight hinges, deprived of any other chance in life to swing open into unnecessary risk and thus into enchantment.

That is the gods' work, spinning threads of death through the lives of mortal men, an all to make a song for those to come.

Gods play games with the fates of men. But first they have to get all the pieces on the board and look all over the place for the dice.

Here in St. Cloud’s,” Dr. Larch wrote, “ I have been given the choice of playing God or leaving practically everything up to chance. It is my experience that practically everything is left up to chance much of the time; men who believe in good and evil, and who believe that good should win, should watch for those moments when it is possible to play God – we should seize those moments. There won’t be may

And sing to those that hold the vital shears; And turn the adamantine spindle round, On which the fate of gods and men is wound.

Luck is a goddess not to be coerced and forcibly wooed by those who seek her favours. From such masterful spirits she turns away. But it happens sometimes that, if we put our hand in hers with the humble trust of a little child, she will have pity on us, and not fail us in our hour of need.

People break down into two groups. When they experience something lucky, group number one sees it as more than luck, more than coincidence. They see it as a sign, evidence, that there is someone up there, watching out for them. Group number two sees it as just pure luck. Just a happy turn of chance.

This was love: a string of coincidences that gathered significance and became miracles.

Certainly. My whole life has been decided by fate. I think something more powerful than we are decides our fates for us. I know one thing – I've never planned anything that ever happened to me.

In the ill-judged execution of the well-judged plan of things the call seldom produces the comer, the man to love rarely coincides with the hour for loving. Nature does not often say 'See!' to her poor creature at a time when seeing can lead to happy doing; or reply 'Here!' to a body's cry of 'Where?' till the hide-and-seek has become an irksome outworn game.

It is fortune, not wisdom, that rules man's life.

Life just happens the way it's supposed to happen. It delivers you to where it delivers you.

Synchronicity: A meaningful coincidence of two or more events where something other than the probability of chance is involved.

Nothing ever happens by chance; everything is pushed from behind.

How much in this world is charged to chance or fortune, or veiled under a more devout name, and accorded to Providence; while, when we come to look honestly into affairs, we find it to be a debt of our own accumulation, and one which we must inevitably pay.

What if things happened to you—special, magic things—because you’d been preparing for them?

God does not cause our misfortunes. Some are caused by bad luck, some are caused by bad people, and some are simply an inevitable consequence of our being human and being mortal. living in a world of inflexible natural laws. The painful things that happen to us are not punishments for our misbehavior, nor are they in any way part of some grand design on God's part. Because the tragedy is not God's will, we need not feel hurt or betrayed by God when tragedy strikes. We can turn to Him for help in overcoming it, precisely because we can tell ourselves that God is as outraged by it as we are.

Men have made an idol of luck as an excuse for their own thoughtlessness.

In my life, all of the best things that have happened to me have almost invariably been accidents or fate.

For by the will of the gods Fate hath held sway since ancient days.

Men plan. Fate Laughs. Guis Alera, First Lord