It was nice to hear the voices of little children at play, provided you took care to be far enough away not to hear what they were actually saying.
Interpretation
The quote humorously highlights how the joy of children's laughter can be overshadowed by the reality of their often candid and unfiltered speech.
In this quote, Terry Pratchett comments on the inherent charm of children's laughter and play, but with a twist of irony. While the joy and innocence exhibited by children can bring delight, there is an implicit suggestion that their conversations can sometimes be surprising, candid, or even inappropriate. Thus, the speaker appreciates the sound from a distance, allowing the joyous essence to shine through without the complications of their actual words.
In practice
This quote could be shared during a parenting seminar to highlight the joys and challenges of raising children.
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.
Perhaps I am just a coward who loves to laugh at life better than I do cry with it. But when I do get to crying, boy, I can roll a mean tear.
Laughter is the corrective force which prevents us from becoming cranks.
I do benefits for all religions - I'd hate to blow the hereafter on a technicality.
Dieting makes me want to murder everyone around me.
Humor and knowledge are the two great hopes of our culture.
Why can't they have gay people in the army? Personally, I think they are just afraid of a thousand guys with M16s going, "Who'd you call a faggot?"
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