And all those exclamation marks, you notice? Five? A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head.
Interpretation
This quote humorously suggests that excessive enthusiasm or punctuation may indicate a lack of seriousness or stability.
In this quote, Terry Pratchett uses humor to illustrate a whimsical perspective on the use of exclamation marks, associating them with an eccentricity that suggests a person is not quite stable. It pokes fun at how people might express exaggerated excitement, evoking the imagery of someone who is not only playful but potentially unhinged, highlighting the absurdity in over-enthusiasm.
In practice
Use this quote when discussing the use of punctuation in writing during a language class.
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.
All my humor is based upon destruction and despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I’d be standing on the breadline right in back of J. Edgar Hoover.
Journalist: a person without any ideas but with an ability to express them; a writer whose skill is improved by a deadline: the more time he has, the worse he writes.
I've never been asked to appear on 'I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!,' so I guess I mustn't be on the professional skids just yet.
A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth.
I said it in Hebrew—I said it in Dutch— I said it in German and Greek; But I wholly forgot (and it vexes me much) That English is what you speak!
Someone who makes you laugh is a comedian. Someone who makes you think and then laugh is a humorist.
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