Bill Door was impressed. Miss Flitworth could actually give the word "revenue", which had two vowels and one diphthong, all the peremptoriness of the word "scum.
Interpretation
This quote humorously highlights the contrast between the serious nature of financial terms and the dismissive tone towards less respectable words.
In this quote, Terry Pratchett illustrates how Miss Flitworth possesses the ability to infuse a seemingly mundane financial term like 'revenue' with a level of disdain comparable to that directed at the word 'scum'. This reflects not only on her character but also on the nuances of language and perception, where certain words can evoke powerful emotions and attitudes depending on the context in which they are used.
In practice
Use this quote in a speech about the power of language in daily communication.
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 human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
Weather forecast for tonight: dark. Continued dark overnight, with widely scattered light by morning.
The thing I try to get across to the writers - and I do a lot of writing, too - is that when I do stand-up, nothing I talk about is funny. Everything is really sad and tragic and then I make it funny.
It will be written on my tombstone in very large letters, 'Here lies Hikaru Sulu,' and in very tiny letters, 'aka George Takei.' I don't protest the inevitable.
Absurdity is what I like most in life, and there's humor in struggling in ignorance. If you saw a man repeatedly running into a wall until he was a bloody pulp, after a while it would make you laugh because it becomes absurd.
I was kind of shy as a lad, and a lot of things that made me laugh, I found, did not make other people laugh.
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