You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look.
Interpretation
This quote humorously highlights the limitations one faces in a particular role or identity.
Terry Pratchett uses the metaphor of a tortoise to illustrate that some individuals or groups may not have the capacity to confront challenges or adversaries directly. Instead of aggression, they may resort to subtlety or nonverbal communication, emphasizing that one's nature can dictate the approach to conflict or tension in life.
In practice
In a discussion about the limits of personal abilities during a team meeting.
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.
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.
I'm not cruel, sir, I won't shoot you in the guts, but I will make you realize how much you took your toes for granted.
Don't talk to me." "Why not?" "Because I want to fix that in my memory for ever. Draco Malfoy, the amazing bouncing ferret.
You will, I am sure, agree with me that... if page 534 only finds us in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really intolerable.
Very often in Chekhov, where he exhibits a little bit of human behavior that you recognize as true, you give a little laugh. It's like a reflex.
A computer chatted to itself in alarm as it noticed an airlock open and close itself for no apparent reason. This was because Reason was in fact out to lunch.
Golf acts as a corrective against sinful pride. I attribute the insane arrogance of the later Roman Emperors almost entirely to the fact that, never having played golf, they never knew that strange chastening humility which is engendered by a topped chip shot. If Cleopatra had been ousted in the first round of the Ladies' Singles, we should have heard a lot less of her proud imperiousness.
Our most noted satirists are true columnists, and their opinions can be worth more than any well-documented expose.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.