Fer De Lance Quotes

I care with the brightened curiosity of one who loves a subject for no rational reason, but who loves it nonetheless and prodigally. This is the ardor of the academic Austenologist who believes that if she looks beneath the floorboards of the right dusty attic, she will find the diary entry explaining why Jane Austen rejected her one marriage proposal the day after she'd accepted it; of the birder in Costa Rica tiptoeing through tails of biting ants and fer-de-lance serpents in hopes of glimpsing a rare hummingbird that no one has seen for fifteen years. I could list such loves forever, the sort that visit our imaginations on the cusp of the impossible but that we cannot erase from our minds. We follow the trail with whatever breadcrumbs we can gather, with hope, with love, with an almost magical combination of urgency and patience... ~ Lyanda Lynn Haupt

Nature has arranged that when you overcome a given inertia the resulting momentum is proportionate. If I were to begin borrowing money I would end by devising means of persuading the Secretary of the Treasury to lend me the gold reserve. ~ Rex Stout

The Tour (de France) is essentially a math problem, a 2,000-mile race over three weeks that's sometimes won by a margin of a minute or less. How do you propel yourself through space on a bicycle, sometimes steeply uphill, at a speed sustainable for three weeks? Every second counts. ~ Lance Armstrong

The truth is, if you asked me to choose between winning the Tour de France and cancer, I would choose cancer. Odd as it sounds, I would rather have the title of cancer survivor than winner of the Tour, because of what it has done for me as a human being, a man, a husband, a son, and a father. ~ Lance Armstrong

Lance Armstrong showed up, and I started talking to him; I saw all these people with cancer who followed him to Paris for the Tour de France, and I saw the difference he was making in their lives. That put it together for me ... having it be not so much about me, but [my being] a vehicle for it. ~ Michael J. Fox

In a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to call to mind, there lived not long since one of those gentlemen that keep a lance in the lance-rack, an old buckler, a lean hack, and a greyhound for coursing. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

It gave me a chance to re-evaluate my life and my career. Cancer certainly gives things a new perspective. I would not have won the Tour de France if I had not had cancer. It gave me new strength and focus. ~ Lance Armstrong

Seated on his horse, resting in his stirrups and leaning on the end of his lance, filled with sad and troubled forebodings; ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Gibney, we gotta win this fucking Tour de France. ~ Lance Armstrong

I've given gifts in the Tour de France and it's come back to bit me. So no gifts. ~ Lance Armstrong

Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

When they had ended their prayers, the Angel of Death recovered his loquacity and his gayety and ascending the chariot again, preceded by Gil Gil, spoke as follows.

'The village you see on that mountain is Gethsemane. In it was the Garden of Olives. On the other side you can distinguish an eminence crowned by a temple which stands out against a starry sky - that is Golgotha. There I passed the greatest day of my existence. I thought I had vanquished God himself - and vanquished he was for some hours. But, alas! on that mount, too, it was that three days later I saw myself disarmed and my power brought to naught on the morning of a certain Sunday. Jesus had risen from the dead. There, too, took place on the same occasion my great single combat with Nature. There took place my duel with her, that terrible duel (at the third hour of the day, I remember it well), when, as soon as she saw me thrust the lance of Longinus in the breast of the Saviour she began to throw stones at me, to upturn the cemeteries, to bring the dead to life, and I know not what besides. I thought poor Nature had lost her senses.'

The Angel of Death seemed to reflect for a moment... ("The Friend of Death") ~ Pedro Antonio De Alarcón

You know, once I was thinking of quitting when I was diagnosed with brain, lung and testicular cancer all at the same time. But with the love and support of my friends and family, I got back on the bike and won the Tour de France five times in a row. But I'm sure you have a good reason to quit. ~ Lance Armstrong

If you go to Wikipedia and you look at the Tour de France, there's this huge block in World War One with no winners, and there's another block in World War Two. And then it seems like there's another world war. ~ Lance Armstrong

There were no shortcuts, I realized. It took years of racing to build up the mind and body and character until a rider had logged hundreds of races and thousands of miles of road. I wouldn't be able to win a Tour de France until I had enough iron in my legs, and lungs, and brain and Heart. ~ Lance Armstrong

Well, you better ride like you stole something 'cause you are about to win a stage in the Tour de Fance. ~ Lance Armstrong

Ceremony forbids us to express by words things that are lawful and natural, and we obey it; reason forbids us to do things unlawful and ill, and nobody obeys it. ~ Michel De Montaigne

Karl Popper once advised a student that if he wanted to reap intellectual fame, he should write endless pages of obscure, high-flown prose that would leave the reader puzzled and cowed. He should then here and there smuggle in a few sensible, straightforward sentences all could understand. The reader would feel that since he has grasped this part, he must have also grasped the rest. He would then congratulate himself and praise the author. ~ Anthony De Jasay

I see many so-called conservative commentators, including some faith leaders, focusing on favorable policy initiatives or court appointments to justify their acceptance of this damage, while de-emphasizing the impact of this president on basic norms and ethics. That strikes me as both hypocritical and wrong. The hypocrisy is evident if you simply switch the names and imagine that a President Hillary Clinton had conducted herself in a similar fashion in office. I've said this earlier but it's worth repeating: close your eyes and imagine these same voices if President Hillary Clinton had told the FBI director, 'I hope you will let it go,' about the investigation of a senior aide, or told casual, easily disprovable lies nearly every day and then demanded we believe them. The hypocrisy is so thick as to be almost darkly funny. I say this as someone who has worked in law enforcement for most of my life, and served presidents of both parties. What is happening now is not normal. It is not fake news. It is not okay.

Whatever your politics, it is wrong to dismiss the damage to the norms and traditions that have guided the presidency and our public life for decades or, in many cases, since the republic was founded. It is also wrong to stand idly by, or worse, to stay silent when you know better, while a president so brazenly seeks to undermine public confidence in law enforcement institutions that were established to keep our leaders in check...without these checks on our l ~ James Comey

There is nothing that can equal the treasure of so many shared memories. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

So I think where people tend to end up results from a combination of encouragement, accident, and lucky break, etc. etc. Like many others, my career happened like it did because certain doors opened and certain doors closed. You know, at a certain point I thought it would be great to make film documentaries. Well, in fact, I found that to be incredibly hard and very expensive to do and I didn't really have the courage to keep battling away at that. In another age, I might have been an academic in a university, if the university system had been different. So it's all about trying to find the best fit between your talents and what the world can offer at that point in time. ~ Alain De Botton

All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

It is striking how much more seriously we are likely to be taken after we have been dead a few centuries. ~ Alain De Botton

War is much too serious a thing to be left to military men. ~ Charles Maurice De Talleyrand

We so love all new and unusual things that we even derive a secret pleasure from the saddest and most tragic events, both because of their novelty and because of the natural malignity that exists within us. ~ Madeleine De Souvre, Marquise De ...

For some parents, as with Jason's father, the least popular feature of their children is defiance. Yet it is one of the most important for safety. If defiance is always met with discipline and never with discussion, that can handicap a child. The moment the two-year-old defiantly asserts his will for the first time may be cause for celebration, not castigation, for he is building the courage to resist. If your teenage daughter never tests her defiance on you, she may well be unable to use it on a predator. ~ Gavin De Becker

Neither the gifts nor the blows of fortune equal those of nature. ~ Luc De Clapiers

I thought of the similarities of complaints
always selfishness, always blindness
and the old psychological truth that what we complain of in others, others will complain of in us. ~ Alain De Botton

I'm always telling Don King's people when there's a top-10 heavyweight they've got that needs an opponent, I'm ready. ~ Mark De Mori

A man should keep for himself a little back shop, all his own, quite unadulterated, in which he establishes his true freedom and chief place of seclusion and solitude. ~ Michel De Montaigne

Everything must not always be said, for that would be folly. ~ Michel De Montaigne

Henceforth, language studies were no longer directed merely towards correcting grammar. ~ Ferdinand De Saussure

There is no chain of philosophical reasoning or method of philosophical enquiry through which we can arrive at the truths of faith as conclusions. But once by faith we have acknowledged those truths we are able to understand why there is good reason to acknowledge them. This, as he was to argue a little later, is because of the effects of sin on the human mind. It is "because human minds are obscured by familiarity with darkness, which covers them in a night of sins and bad habits, and are unable to perceive with the clarity and purity proper to reason" that authority has been provided to bring "the faltering eye into the light of truth" (De moribus ecclesiae catholicae 31.2.31). ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

Who wanted to make lemonade from lemons, when you could make perfectly good lemon grenades? ~ Melissa De La Cruz

One can have a society without God," writes Régis Debray, "but there cannot be a society without religion." He adds, "Those nations on the way to disbelief are on the path to abdication." One can also cite Georges Bataille, according to whom, "religion, whose essence is the search for lost intimacy, boils down to a clearly conscious effort to become entirely self-conscious. ~ Alain De Benoist

The only rose without thorns is friendship. ~ Madeleine De Scudery

There is no sound more feminine than a woman in a taffeta dress. ~ Oscar De La Renta

I've been obsessed with this kind of visual storytelling for quite a while, and I try to create material that allows me to explore it. ~ Brian De Palma

All the passions make us commit faults; love makes us commit the most ridiculous ones. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Every batch of sperm represents an opportunity for genetic typos - called de novo mutations - to be passed on. A 20-year-old man and woman will each pass on about 20 de novo mutations to a baby they conceive. By the time the couple is 40, a woman's total has remained at 20, while a man's has jumped to 65 - and it keeps climbing from there. ~ Jeffrey Kluger

In love, 'tis no other than frantic desire for that which flies from us. ~ Michel De Montaigne

Who was the first man that scratched his head? For to my thinking it must have been our father Adam. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

As Simone de Beauvoir had told us, women are not supposed to eclipse men in a world in which success and power are marked out for them. It is not easy to take up the historic privilege of dominance over women... if he is economically dependent on her talents. At the same time, she receives the fatal message that she must conceal her talents and abilities in order to be loved by him. ~ Deborah Levy

You can go watch everything so you can see a transition of someone who is coming into his own. That's what I feel like my music is. I'm finally here, arriving and I know exactly what I want to talk to people about. ~ Young De

Regardless of one victory, two victories, four victories, there's never been a victory by a cancer survivor. That's a fact that hopefully I'll be remembered for. ~ Lance Armstrong

The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

Certainly solitude is dangerous for active minds. We require around us men who can think and talk. When we are alone for a long time, we people space with phantoms. ~ Guy De Maupassant

Whoever believes anything esteems that it is a work of charity to persuade another of it. ~ Michel De Montaigne