Duels Quotes

All of those faeries and duels and mad queens and so on, and no one quoted old Billy Shakespeare. Not even once. ~ Jim Butcher

That's why he was here, to surrender himself to longing, to listen to his host recite the anecdotal texts, all the passed-down stories of bonehead plays and swirling brawls, the pitching duels that carried into twilight, stories that Marvin had been collecting for half a century
the deep eros of memory that separates baseball from other sports. ~ Don DeLillo

You don't think I know that?" Puck was shouting now, green eyes feverish. "You don't think I regret what I did, every single day? You lost Ariella, but I lost you both! Believe it or not, I was kind of a mess, too, Ash. It got to a point where I actually looked forward to our random duels, because that was the only time I could talk to you. When you were freaking trying to kill me!"
"Don't compare your loss to mine," I snarled. "You have no idea what I went through, what you caused."
"You think I don't know pain?" Puck shook his head at me. "Or loss? I've been around a lot longer than you, prince! I know what love is, and I've lost my fair share, too. Just because we have a different way of handling it, doesn't mean I don't have scars of my own."
"Name one," I scoffed. "Give me one instance where you haven't - "
"Meghan Chase!" Puck roared, startling me into silence. ~ Julie Kagawa

Just as Manda Lewis's impressions of the world had been informed by her reading
leading her to expect balls, duels, and conveniently timed thunderstorms out of life
so, too, had mine; but what I expected was intellectual commerce between equals. ~ Marie Brennan

Who is the pioneer of modern journalism? Not Hemingway who wrote of his experiences in the trenches, not Orwell who spent a year of his life with the Parisian poor, not Egon Erwin Kisch the expert on Prague prostitutes, but Oriana Fallaci who in the years 1969 to 1972 published a series of interviews with the most famous politicians of the time. Those interviews were more than mere conversations; they were duels. Before the powerful politicians realized that they were fighting under unequal conditions
for she was allowed to ask questions but they were not
they were already on the floor of the ring, KO'ed. ~ Milan Kundera

We must not take everything on our own shoulders; if we did, our successors would have nothing to do but to sleep. We must leave them some problems to solve, and the means with which to solve them - namely, a mighty Army and a mighty Air Force ; and the Army must be taught that, if some cowardly crew of politicians should come to power, then it is the Army's duty to intervene - as the Army in Japan did.
As a general principle, I think that a peace which lasts for more than twenty-five years is harmful to a nation. Peoples, like individuals, sometimes need regenerating by a little bloodletting. Our ancestors fought duels. Next came the barber and his bleeding-cups - and now we have the safety razor !
Nobody in the Middle Ages suffered from high blood-pressure - their constant brawls were ample safeguard against it; and in Upper Bavaria they practised the custom of Sunday bloodletting. Now, thanks to the safety razor, the world's bloodpressure is rising. It fills me with shame when I think that I have lost more blood shaving than on the field of battle. ~ Adolf Hitler

Your mother was a hero. She developed a spell for gnomeatic fever. And she was the youngest headmaster in Watford history."
Baz is looking at Penny like they've never met.
"And," Penny goes on, "she defended your father in three duels before he accepted her proposal."
"That sounds barbaric," I say.
"It was traditional," Baz says.
"It was brilliant," Penny says. "I've read the minutes."
"Where?" Baz asks her.
"We have them in our library at home," she says "My dad loves marriage rites. Any sort of family magic, actually. He and my mother are bound together in five dimensions. ~ Rainbow Rowell

Daughter, daughter, shining bright
Precious jewel within mine sight
Oh, if I could soar with thee
As you seek your destiny.

To see with you the caves and skies
Vistas grand beneath your eyes
Taking wing to horizons new
Let us wonder who waits for you.

A dragon bright?
A dragon dark?
Victor of duels with battle mark?
A dragon strong?
A dragon keen?
Singer of honors and triumphs seen?

Red, Gold, Bronze, and Blue
To your lord you shall be true,
Copper, Silver, Black, and White,
Who will win your mating flight?

For in your hearts our future rests
To see our line with hatchlings blessed
And for those who threaten clutch of flame,
To feel the wrath of dragon-dame. ~ E.E. Knight

When it comes to love triangles and duels to the death, you should always cheat. - Fairy Werewolf vs. Zombie Vampire ~ Charlie Jane Anders

I've given her signs! I've given her plenty of signs. What does she want me to do? Slap him across the face with my glove, and challenge him to pistols at dawn? ~ Molly Ringle

The Battle for the Philippines was the greatest naval battle in history, judged in terms of the number of ships taking part, the number of ships sunk, and the importance of its outcome. It included every form of naval warfare of the 20th century: gunnery duels between battleships; destroyer battles at night and by day, as ferocious and sustained as any at the Battle of Jutland; submarines that stalked the depths; sinking many ships; and finally, carrier warfare on a scale never dreamed of even by the most ardent enthusiasts of air warfare at sea. ~ Richard Hough

... What do you want, Ash?"
"Your head," Ash answered softly. "On a pike. But what I want doesn't matter this time." He pointed his sword at me. "I've come for her."
I gasped as my heart and stomach began careening around my chest. He's here for me, to kill me, like he promised at Elysium.
"Over my dead body." Puck smiled, as if this was a friendly conversation on the street, but I felt muscles coiling under his skin.
"This was part of the plan." The prince raised his sword, the icy blade wreathed in mist. "I will avenge her today, and put her memory to rest." For a moment, a shadow of anguish flitted across his face, and he closed his eyes. When he opened them, they were cold and glittered with malice. "Prepare yourself."
"Stay back, princess," Puck warned, pushing me out of the way. He reached into his boot and pullet out a dagger, the curved blade clear as glass. "This might get a little rough."
"Puck, no." I clutched at his sleeve. "Don't fight him. Someone could die."
"Duels to the death tend to end that way." Puck grinned, but it was a savage thing, grim and frightening. "But I'm touched that you care. One moment, princeling," he called to Ash, who inclined his head. Taking my wrist, Puck steered me behind the fountain and bent close, his breath warm on my face.
"I have to do this, princess," he said firmly. "Ash won't let us go without a fight, and this has been coming for a long time now." For a moment, a shadow of regret fl ~ Julie Kagawa

The first thing you notice about New Orleans are the burying grounds - the cemeteries - and they're a cold proposition, one of the best things there are here. Going by, you try to be as quiet as possible, better to let them sleep. Greek, Roman, sepulchres- palatial mausoleums made to order, phantomesque, signs and symbols of hidden decay - ghosts of women and men who have sinned and who've died and are now living in tombs. The past doesn't pass away so quickly here. You could be dead for a long time.

The ghosts race towards the light, you can almost hear the heavy breathing spirits, all determined to get somewhere. New Orleans, unlike a lot of those places you go back to and that don't have the magic anymore, still has got it. Night can swallow you up, yet none of it touches you. Around any corner, there's a promise of something daring and ideal and things are just getting going. There's something obscenely joyful behind every door, either that or somebody crying with their head in their hands. A lazy rhythm looms in the dreamy air and the atmosphere pulsates with bygone duels, past-life romance, comrades requesting comrades to aid them in some way. You can't see it, but you know it's here. Somebody is always sinking. Everyone seems to be from some very old Southern families. Either that or a foreigner. I like the way it is.

There are a lot of places I like, but I like New Orleans better. There's a thousand different angles at any moment. At any time you ~ Bob Dylan

Everything ends this way in France - everything. Weddings, christenings, duels, burials, swindlings, diplomatic affairs - everything is a pretext for a good dinner. ~ Jean Anouilh

True, duels were fought by convention at dawn in isolated locations to ensure the privacy of the gentlemen involved. But were they fought behind ash heaps or in scrapyards? Of course not! They were fought in a clearing among the birch trees with a dusting of snow. Or on the banks of a winding rivulet. Or at the edge of a family estate where the breezes shake the blossoms from the trees. . . . That is, they were fought in settings that one might have expected to see in the second act of an opera. ~ Amor Towles

Duels, murder, and feuding were constants in the Highlands, as was "scorning," or taking food and shelter by force from tenants of other clans when a feud was under way. ~ Arthur Herman

Ralston didn't care. He turned on his brother as the surgeon knelt next to him and inspected the wound. "She could have been killed!"
And what about you?" This time, it was Callie who spoke, her own pent-up energy releasing in anger, and the men turned as one to look at her, surprised that she and found her voice. "What about you and your idiotic pland to somehow restore my honor by playing guns out in the middle of nowhere with OXFORD?" She said the baron's name in disdain. "Like children? Of all the ridiculous, unnecessary, thoughtless, MALE things to do ... who even FIGHTS duels anymore?! ~ Sarah MacLean

Sword fighting is not a dance, not in battle. You save all that showing off for the duels if you want to. In battle, when you kill, kill quickly, and be ready for the next enemy to come at you. One strike should be all it takes. It's all you'll get ~ G.R. Matthews

Fought their duels on Greek territory, conscripted Greek men, requisitioned Greek crops and gold, levied twenty years' taxes in two, and left the cities destitute. ~ Will Durant

I cannot think of those years without horror, loathing and heartache. I killed men in war and challenged men to duels in order to kill them. I lost at cards, consumed the labour of the peasants, sentenced them to punishments, lived loosely, and deceived people. Lying, robbery, adultery of all kinds, drunkenness, violence, murder
there was no crime I did not commit, and in spite of that people praised my conduct and my contemporaries considered and consider me to be a comparatively moral man.
So I lived for ten years.
During that time I began to write from vanity, covetousness, and pride. In my writings I did the same as in my life. to get fame and money, for the sake of which I wrote, it was necessary to hide the good and to display the evil. and I did so. How often in my writings I contrived to hide under the guise of indifference, or even of banter, those strivings of mine towards goodness which gave meaning to my life! And I succeeded in this and was praised. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Wyatt avoided the petty gunfights and headed to a saloon and rigged up a bunch of Molotov cocktails. Her firebombs against members of Tom and Vik's posse had destroyed the scenario's promise of so many wonderful gun duels. She'd killed most of their group, too, and shown everyone that she wasn't getting promoted only because of her programming skills. Her dislike of fighting had paradoxically turned her into a lethal killing machine. ~ S.J. Kincaid

It's a damn shame that duels don't play a role in the modern world anymore. ~ Elle Kennedy

You mentioned that Palermo, the part of Buenos Aires where you were brought up, had been a violent place full of bohemians and bandits. There they had two names for the knife, 'the blade' and 'the slicer'. The two names described the same object, but 'the blade' was the thing itself, and 'the slicer' described its function. 'The blade' could fit in the hand even of a sickly child shut up in his father's library, 'the blade' could be any of the superannuated daggers and swords belonging to his warrior grandfather or great-grandfather and displayed on the walls of his house, but 'the slicer', the knife in the hand slicing back and forth, in and out, existed only in his imagination, in a fascinating world of rapid settlings of accounts and duels over honor, an insult or a woman, in dark street where you never went, where no writer went, except in the literature he wrote.

'I've always felt that in order to be a great writer, one should have the experience of life at sea, which is why Conrad and Melville and, in a way, Stevenson, who ended his days in the South Seas, were better than all of us, Vogelstein. At sea, a writer flees from the minor demons and faces only the definitive ones. A character in Conrad says that he has a horror of ports because, in port, ships rot and men go to the devil. He meant the devils of domesticity and incoherence, the small devils of terra firma. But I think that having experience of "the slicer" would give a writer the same sensation as g ~ Luis Fernando Verissimo

Another thing is war. I am naturally warlike. Attacking is one of my instincts. Being able to be an enemy, being an enemy - these require a strong nature, perhaps; in any case every strong nature presupposes them. It needs resistances, so it seeks
resistance: aggressive pathos is just as integrally necessary to strength as the feeling of revenge and reaction is to weakness. Woman, forinstance, is vengeful: that is a condition of her weakness, as is her sensitivity to other people's afflictions. - The strength of anattacker can in a way be gauged by the opposition he requires; allgrowth makes itself manifest by searching out a more powerful opponent - or problem: for a philosopher who is warlike challenges problems to duels, too. The task is not to master all resistances, but only those against which one has to pit one's entire strength, suppleness, and mastery-at-arms - opponents who are equal ... ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Our talks are wonderful, interplays, not duels but swift illuminations of one another. I can make his tentative thoughts click. He enlarges mine. I fire him. He makes me flow. There is always movement between us. And he is grasping. He takes hold of me like a prey. ~ Anais Nin

Shy South comes home to her farm to find a blackened shell, her brother and sister stolen, and knows she'll have to go back to bad old ways if she's ever to see them again. She sets off in pursuit with only her cowardly old step-father Lamb for company. But it turns out he's hiding a bloody past of his own. None bloodier. Their journey will take them across the lawless plains, to a frontier town gripped by gold fever, through feuds, duels, and massacres, high into unmapped mountains to a reckoning with ancient enemies, and force them into alliance with Nicomo Cosca, infamous soldier of fortune, a man no one should ever have to trust ... ~ Joe Abercrombie

Why should he treat Elizabeth as if he harbored any feelings for her, including anger?
Elizabeth sensed that he was wavering a little, and she pressed home her advantage, using calm reason: "Surely nothing that happened between us should make us behave badly to each other now. I mean, when you think on it, it was noting to us but a harmless weekend flirtation, wasn't it?"
"Obviously."
"Neither of us was hurt, were we?"
"No."
"Well then, there's no reason why we should not be cordial to each other now, is there?" she demanded with a bright, beguiling smile. "Good heavens, if every flirtation ended in enmity, no one in the ton would be speaking to anyone else!"
She had neatly managed to put him in the position of either agreeing with her or else, by disagreeing, admitting that she had been something more to him than a flirtation, and Ian realized it. He'd guessed where her calm arguments were leading, but even so, he was reluctantly impressed with how skillfully she was maneuvering him into having to agree with her. "Flirtations," he reminded her smoothly, "don't normally end in duels."
"I know, and I am sorry my brother shot you."
Ian was simply not proof against the appeal in those huge green eyes of hers. "Forget it," he said with an irritated sigh, capitulating to all she was asking. "Stay the seven days."
Suppressing the urge to twirl around with relief, she smiled into his eyes. "Then could we have a truce for the time I'm here ~ Judith McNaught

I'd be sixteen by now," he said slowly.
"Oh, Magnus!" Ragnor wailed. "That's disgusting! How could you? Have you lost your mind?"
"What?" Magnus asked again.
"We agreed eighteen was the cutoff age," said Ragnor. "You, I, and Catarina made a vow."
"A v - Oh, wait. You think I'm dating Raphael?" Magnus asked. "Raphael? That's ridiculous. That's - "
"That's the most revolting idea I've ever heard." Raphael's voice rang out to the ceiling. Probably people in the street could hear him.
"That's a little strong," said Magnus. "And, frankly, hurtful."
"And if I did wish to indulge in unnatural pursuits - and let me be clear, I certainly do not," Raphael continued scornfully, "as if I would choose him. Him! He dresses like a maniac, acts like a fool, and makes worse jokes than the man people throw rotten eggs at outside the Dew Drop every Saturday."
Ragnor began to laugh.
"Better men than you have begged for a chance to win all this," Magnus muttered. "They have fought duels in my honor. One man fought a duel for my honor, but that was a little embarrassing since it is long gone."
"Do you know he spends hours in the bathroom sometimes?" Raphael announced mercilessly. "He wastes actual magic on his hair. On his hair!"
"I love this kid," said Ragnor. ~ Cassandra Clare

I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him. ~ Mark Twain

Well, you can't walk into someone's house and demand to go through their attic without expecting a few duels. ~ Rainbow Rowell

Are there rules?'
'No gods, no staffs, first man to stay down for the count loses and we suspend the contest if the building collapses.'
- on magical duels ~ Ben Aaronovitch

If all seconds were as averse to duels as their principals, very little blood would be shed in that way. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

Lombardi, a certain magic still lingers in the very name. It speaks of duels in the snow and November mud ... He remains for many the heart of pro football, pumping hard right now. ~ Steve Sabol

something so single-minded. Never has he felt such a hunger to belong. In the rows of dormitories are cadets who talk of alpine skiing, of duels, of jazz clubs and governesses and boar hunting; boys who employ curse words with virtuosic skill and boys who talk about cigarettes named for cinema stars; boys who speak of "telephoning the colonel" and boys who have baronesses for mothers. ~ Anthony Doerr

You don't think I regret what I did, every single day? You lost Ariella, but I lost you both! Believe it or not, I was kind of a mess too, Ash. It got to a point where I actually looked forward to our random duels, because that was the only time I could talk to you. When you were freaking trying to kill me! ~ Julie Kagawa

Are pistols with revolving barrels, sword-sticks, bowie-knives, and such things, Institutions on which you pride yourselves? Are bloody duels, brutal combats, savage assaults, shooting down and stabbing in the streets, your Institutions! Why, I shall hear next that Dishonour and Fraud are among the Institutions of the great republic!' The ~ Charles Dickens

With respect to duels, indeed, I have my own ideas. Few things in this so surprising world strike me with more surprise. Two little visual spectra of men, hovering with insecure enough cohesion in the midst of the unfathomable, and to dissolve therein, at any rate, very soon, make pause at the distance of twelve paces asunder; whirl around, and simultaneously by the cunningest mechanism, explode one another into dissolution; and, offhand, become air, and non-extant
the little spitfires! ~ Thomas Carlyle

These folk knew all about death. They killed their own livestock. They died from fevers, falls, or broken bones gone sour. Death was like an unpleasant neighbor. You didn't talk about him for fear he might hear you and decide to pay a visit.
Except for stories, of course. Tales of poisoned kings and duels and old wars were fine. They dressed death in foreign clothes and sent him far from your door. A chimney fire or the croup cough were terrifying. But Gibea's trial or the siege of Enfast, those were different. They were like prayers, like charms muttered late at night when you were walking alone in the dark. Stories were like ha'penny amulets you bought from a peddler, just in case. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

As ordeals and duels gave way to confession as a proof of guilt, judicial torture was actually increasing in France. ~ Eric Jager

A cat is a regency gentleman
elegant of pose, exquisite of manner, with spotless linen and an enthusiasm for bare knuckle fights, rampaging love affairs, duels by moonlight and the singing of glees. He expects immaculate service from his domestic staff, and possesses a range of invective that would make a navy blanch. ~ Pam Brown

Queen Mary had a way of interrupting tattle about elopements, duels, and play debts, by asking the tattlers, very quietly yet significantly, whether they had ever read her favorite sermon
Dr. Tillotson on Evil Speaking. ~ Thomas B. Macaulay