All assassins had a full-length mirror in their rooms, because it would be a terrible insult to anyone to kill them when you were badly dressed.
Interpretation
This quote humorously highlights the importance of appearance, even in serious situations.
Terry Pratchett cleverly suggests that even in the context of assassins and their deadly work, there exists a sense of etiquette regarding one's appearance. The underlying irony of the statement implies that the way one presents themselves is significant, even to the point that it would be deemed insulting to commit an act of violence while lacking proper attire, thus blending humor with a commentary on social norms.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of first impressions in social situations.
And then Jack chopped down what was the world's last beanstalk, adding murder and ecological terrorism to the theft, enticement, and trespass charges already mentioned, and all the giant's children didn't have a daddy anymore. But he got away with it and lived happily ever after, without so much as a guilty twinge about what he had done...which proves that you can be excused for just about anything if you are a hero, because no one asks inconvenient questions.
They've got something they do it with, I think it's called a mocracy, and it means everyone in the whole country can say who the new Tyrant is. One man ... one vet. ... Everyone has ... the vet. Except for women, of course. And children. And criminals. And slaves. And stupid people. And people of foreign extraction. And people disapproved of for, er, various reasons. And lots of other people. But everyone apart from them. It's a very enlightened civilization.
Geography is just physics slowed down, with a couple of trees stuck in it.
You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look.
Any fool could be a witch with a runic knife, but it took skill to be one with an apple corer.
People look down on stuff like geography and meteorology, and not only because they're standing on one and being soaked by the other. They don't look quite like real science. But geography is only physics slowed down and with a few trees stuck on it, and meteorology is full of excitingly fashionable chaos and complexity. And summer isn't a time. It's a place as well. Summer is a moving creature and likes to go south for the winter.
The trouble with law is lawyers.
Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewelry.
The audience today has heard every joke. They know every plot. They know where you're going before you even start. That's a tough audience to surprise, and a tough audience to write for. It's much more competitive now, because the audience is so much more - I want to say sophisticated.
We laugh a lot. That's for sure. Sure beats the alternative, doesn't it?
Since I don't smoke, I decided to grow a mustache - it is better for the health. However, I always carried a jewel-studded cigarette case in which, instead of tobacco, were carefully placed several mustaches, Adolphe Menjou style. I offered them politely to my friends: "Mustache? Mustache? Mustache?" Nobody dared to touch them. This was my test regarding the sacred aspect of mustaches.
My first words, as I was being born [...] I looked up at my mother and said, 'that's the last time I'm going up one of those.
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