The Duel Quotes

Ron told Pippa that during the six years he had spent on the book, Valerie Chernow had developed a powerful identification with Hamilton's wife. "She used to say, 'Eliza is like me: She's good, she's true, she's loyal, she's not ambitious.' There was a purity and a goodness about the character, and that was like Valerie," he says. In 2006, after 27 years of marriage, Valerie passed away. For her gravestone, Ron chose a line from the letter that Hamilton wrote to Eliza on the night before the duel: "Best of wives and best of women. ~ Lin-Manuel Miranda

He keeps going, going, going on; his people groan and fall one after the other, but he keeps on going, going and in the end, perishes himself, but still remains the despot and tsar of the desert because the cross over his grave is visible to caravans thirty-forty miles away and reigns over the wasteland. ~ Anton Chekhov

The duel may go on for a long time, but self-defense often wins over self-reproach. ~ Pawan Mishra

She knew that he would stop her. Perhaps he would be cunning about it. Maybe he would go to the steward behind her back, tell him of the theft and challenge, and ask to be brought before the judge and Irex. If that plan didn't suit Arin, he would find another.
He was going to be a problem.
"You're right," she told him.
Arin blinked, then narrowed his eyes.
"In fact," she continued, "if you had let me explain, I would have told you that I had already decided to call off the duel."
"You have."
She showed him the two letters. The one addressed to her father was on top. She let the mere edge of the other letter show. "One is for my father, telling him what has happened. The other is for Irex, making my apologies and inviting him to collect his five hundred gold pieces whenever he likes."
Arin still looked skeptical.
"He'll also collect you, of course. Knowing him, he'll have you whipped until you're unconscious and even after that. I'm sure that when you wake up, you'll be very glad that I decided to do exactly as you wanted."
Arin snorted.
"If you doubt me, you're welcome to walk with me to the barracks to watch as I give my father's letter to a soldier, with orders for its swift delivery."
"I think I will." He opened the library door.
They left the house and crossed the hard ground. Kestrel shivered. She hadn't stopped to fetch a cloak. She couldn't risk that Arin would change his mind.
When they entered the barra ~ Marie Rutkoski

Most of the world has now outlived good part of these harms, though by no means all of them; but in our South they flourish pretty forcefully still. Not so forcefully as half a generation ago, perhaps, but still forcefully. There, the genuine and wholesome civilization of the nineteenth century is curiously confused and commingled with the Walter Scott Middle-Age sham civilization; and so you have practical, common-sense, progressive ideas, and progressive works; mixed up with the duel, the inflated speech, and the jejune romanticism of an absurd past that is dead, and out of charity ought to be buried. ~ Mark Twain

The last shot wasn't bad," he said, dropping the subject of the duel. "However, the target is the twig, not the leaves. The end of the twig," he added.
"You must have missed the twig yourself," she pointed out, lifting the gun and aiming it carefully, "since it's still there."
"True, but it's shorter than it was when I started."
Elizabeth momentarily forgot what she was doing as she stared at him in disbelief and amazement. "Do you mean you've been clipping the end off it?"
"A bit at a time," he said, concentrating on her next shot.
She hit another leaf on the twig and handed the gun back to him.
"You're not bad," he complimented.
She was an outstanding shot, and his smile said he knew it as he handed her a freshly loaded gun. Elizabeth shook her head. "I'd rather see you try it."
"You doubt my word?"
"Let's merely say I'm a little skeptical."
Taking the gun, Ian raised it in a swift arc, and without pausing to aim, he fired. Two inches of twig spun away and fell to the ground. Elizabeth was so impressed she laughed aloud. "Do you know," she exclaimed with an admiring smile, "I didn't entirely believe until this moment that you really meant to shoot the tassel off Robert's boot!"
He sent her an amused glance as he reloaded and handed her the gun. "At the time I was sorely tempted to aim for something more vulnerable. ~ Judith McNaught

I felt that it was not a historical work, but that, under the guise of physical warfare, it described the duel that perpetually went on in the hearts of mankind, and that physical warfare was brought in merely to make the description of the internal duel more alluring. This preliminary intuition became more confirmed on a closer study of religion and the Gita. A study of the Mahabharata gave it added confirmation. I do not regard the Mahabharata as a historical work in the accepted sense. The Adiparva contains powerful evidence in support of my opinion. By ascribing to the chief actors superhuman or subhuman origins, the great Vyasa made short work the history of kings and their peoples. The persons therein described may be historical, but the author of the Mahabharata has used them merely to drive home his religious theme. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Who taught you to shoot?" he asked when she was standing beside him.
"Our coachman."
"Better the coachman than your brother," Ian mocked, handing her the loaded gun. "The target's that bare twig over there - the one with the leaf hanging off the middle of it."
Elizabeth flinched at his sarcastic reference to his duel with Robert. "I'm truly sorry about that duel," she said, then she concentrated all her attention for the moment on the small twig.
Propping his shoulder against the tree trunk, Ian watched with amusement as she grasped the heavy gun in both her hands and raised it, biting her lip in concentration. "Your brother was a very poor shot," he remarked.
She fired, nicking the leaf at its stem.
"I'm not," she said with a jaunty sidewise smile. And then, because the duel was finally out in the open and he seemed to want to joke about it, she tried to follow suit: "If I'd been there, I daresay I would have - "
His brows lifted. "Waited for the call to fire, I hope? ~ Judith McNaught

He would find the six-fingered man. He would go up to him. He would say simply, "Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die," and then, oh then, the duel. ~ William Goldman

But Roberto already knew what the Jesuit's real objection would be. Like that of the abbe on that evening of the duel when Saint-Savin provoked him: If there are infinite worlds, the Redemption can no longer have any meaning, and we are obliged either to imagine infinite Calvaries or to look on our terrestrial flowerbed as a priveleged spot of the Cosmos, on which God permitted His Son to descend and free us from sin, while the other worlds were not granted this grace
to the discredit of His infinite goodness. ~ Umberto Eco

Bloody hell," he gasped. "Harry. There's a *knife* in my leg. When did *that* happen?"
"In the duel," I told him. "Don't you remember?"
"I thought you'd stepped on me and sprained my ankle," Ramirez replied. Then he blinked again. "Bloody hell. There's a *knife* in my guts." He peered at them. "And they match. ~ Jim Butcher

It was just like Aleksander to steal even this from him, Gavriel thought. To treat the duel as a joke, to treat him as a joke. Now his only choices were to take aim at a man about to fall over or to bear the shame of crying off. And Aleksander would laugh at him later. I wasn't so very drunk, he would say. And if I was, so what? If you weren't such a milksop, then surely you'd have -

Gavriel raised his pistol and shot his brother through the heart. ~ Holly Black

A duel, whether regarded as a ceremony in the cult of honour, or even when reduced in its moral essence to a form of manly sport, demands a perfect singleness of intention, a homicidal austerity of mood. [The duel] ~ Joseph Conrad

Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild, Creation's tears in shoulder blades. ~ Boris Pasternak

You should have let me visit earlier," Jess said, her cheeks radiant from the brisk air outside. "It's been a week since the duel."
Kestrel sank back against the pillows. She had known the sight of Jess would hurt, would remind her that there was a life outside this bedroom. "Ronan isn't allowed."
"I should say not! I'm not letting him see you until you're better. You look awful. No one wants to kiss an invalid."
"Thank you, Jess. I'm so happy you've come. ~ Marie Rutkoski

The duel may go on for long, but the self-defense often wins over the self-reproach. ~ Pawan Mishra

Napoleon I., whose career had the quality of a duel against the whole
of Europe, disliked duelling between the officers of his army. The great military emperor was not a washbuckler, and had little respect for tradition.

Nevertheless, a story of duelling, which became a legend in the army, runs through the epic of imperial wars. To the surprise and admiration of their fellows, two officers, like insane artists trying to gild refined gold or paint the lily, pursued a private contest through the years of universal carnage.
They were officers of cavalry, and their connection with the high-spirited but fanciful animal which carries men into battle seems particularly appropriate.
It would be difficult to imagine for heroes of this legend two officers of infantry of the line, for example, whose fantasy is tamed by much walking exercise, and whose valour necessarily must be of a more plodding kind. As to gunners or engineers, whose heads are kept cool on a diet of mathematics, it is simply unthinkable.

The names of the two officers were Feraud and D'Hubert, and they were both lieutenants in a regiment of hussars, but not in the same regiment. [The duel] ~ Joseph Conrad

The parasol wasn't a very good cane. Its tip dug into the hard, grassless earth, and the folded frame creaked as Kestrel limped across the grounds. But it brought her where she needed to go.
She found Arin walking through the bare orange grove, horse tack draped over his shoulder. It jangled when he stopped and stared at her. He stood, shoulders stiff. As Kestrel came close she saw that his jaw was clenched, and that there was no trace of what her guards had done to him. No bruises. Nor would there be, not for something that had happened nearly a month ago.
"Did I shame you?" Kestrel said.
Something strange crossed his face. "Shame me," Arin repeated. He looked up into the empty branches as if he expected to see fruit there, as if it weren't almost winter.
"The book. The inscription I read. The duel. The way I tricked you. The order I gave to have you imprisoned. Did I shame you?"
He crossed his arms over his chest. He shook his head, his gaze never wavering from the trees. "No. The god of debts knows what I owe."
"Then what is it?" Kestrel was trying so hard not to ask about the rumors or the woman in the market that she said something worse. "Why won't you look at me?"
"I shouldn't even be speaking with you," he muttered.
It dawned on her why it had never made sense that Rax had been the one to release Arin. "My father," she said. "Arin, you don't have to worry about him. He'll be leaving the morning of the Firstwinter ball. The entir ~ Marie Rutkoski

The witcher smiled faintly but quite nastily. "If I understand correctly," he said, "I'm to fight the duel because, if I refuse, I'll be hanged. If I fight, I'm to allow my opponent to injure me because if I wound him, I'll be put to the rack. What charming alternatives. Maybe I should save you the bother? I'll thump my head against the pine tree and render myself helpless. Will that grant you satisfaction?" "Don't ~ Andrzej Sapkowski

How does Chekhov's artistic "programme" comment on the message of The Duel, and vice versa? I should like to be a free artist and nothing more, and I regret that God has not given me the power to be one. I hate lying and violence in all their forms ... Pharisaism, stupidity and despotism reign not in merchants' houses and prisons alone. I see them in science, in literature, in the younger generation ... That is why I have no preference either for gendarmes, or for butchers, or for scientists, or for writers, or for the younger generation. I regard trade-marks and labels as a superstition. My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love, and the most absolute freedom - freedom from violence and lying, whatever forms they may take. This is the programme I would follow if I were a great artist.* ~ Anton Chekhov

Any criticism at all which depresses you to the extent that you feel you cannot ever write anything worth anything is from the Devil and to subject yourself to it is for you an occasion of sin. In you the talent is there and you are expected to use it. Whether the work itself is completely successful, or whether you ever get any worldly success out of it, is a matter of no concern to you. It is like the Japanese swordsmen who are indifferent to getting slain in the duel. ~ Flannery O'Connor

He is a slave."
"He is a man, as I am."
Kestrel slipped from her saddle, stood face-to-face with Ronan, and lied. "He is nothing to me."
Ronan's anger dimmed a little. He waited, listening.
"I never should have challenged Irex." Kestrel decided to weave some truth into her story, to toughen the fabric of it. "But he and I have an unfriendly history. He made me an offer last spring. I turned him down. Since then, he has been…aggressive."
She had Ronan's sympathy then, and she was grateful, for she didn't know what she would do if he and Jess turned their backs on her. She needed them--not only today, but always.
"Irex angered me. The slave was just an excuse." How much easier everything would be if that were so. But Kestrel wouldn't let herself consider the truth. She didn't want to know its shape or see its face. "I was thoughtless and rash, but I've drawn my tiles and must play them. Will you help me, Ronan? Will you do as I asked in my letter?"
"Yes." He still looked unhappy. "Though as far as I can see, there is little for me to do but stand and watch you fight."
"And Jess? Will she be at the duel?"
"Yes, as soon as she is done weeping her eyes out. What a fright you've given us, Kestrel."
Kestrel opened a saddlebag and passed Ronan the purse with the death-price. He took it, recognizing it by its weight and the fact that her letter had told him to expect it. Softly, he said, "You frightened me."
She embraced him, step ~ Marie Rutkoski

The monster I kill every day is the monster of realism. The monster who attacks me every day is destruction. Out of the duel comes the transformation. I turn destruction into creation over and over again. ~ Anais Nin

What stronger denunciation of an agrarian society than the charge of bestiality? Even in modern times, when Basque peasants engage in the duel by insults known as xikito, the accusation of bestiality remains a classic attack. And though to most people, sex with a goat would seem sufficiently perverted, it was not even conceded that they had conventional goat sex. It was group sex, and the goat sometimes used an artificial phallus, with the intercourse sometimes vaginal and sometimes anal. According to some accounts, the goat would lift his tail so the women could kiss his posterior while he broke wind. The ~ Mark Kurlansky

Ronan was waiting for her beyond the estate's guarded gate. From the looks of things, he had been waiting for some time. His horse was nosing brown grass as Ronan sat on a nearby boulder, throwing pebbles at the general's stone wall. When he saw Kestrel ride through the gate on Javelin, he flung his handful of rocks to the path. He remained sitting, elbows propped on his bended knees as he stared at her, his face pinched and white. He said, "I have half a mind to tear you down from your horse."
"You got my message, then."
"And rode instantly here, where guards told me that the lady of the house gave strict orders not to let anyone--even me--inside." His eyes raked over her, taking in the black fighting clothes. "I didn't believe it. I still don't believe it. After you vanished last night, everyone at the party was talking about the challenge, yet I was sure it was just a rumor started by Irex because of whatever has caused that ill will between you. Kestrel, how could you expose yourself like this?"
Her hands tightened around the reins. She thought about how, when she let go, her palms would smell like leather and sweat. She concentrated on imagining that scent. This was easier than paying heed to the sick feeling swimming inside her. She knew what Ronan was going to say.
She tried to deflect it. She tried to talk about the duel itself, which seemed straightforward next to her reasons for it. Lightly, she said, "No one seems to believe that I might win."Marie Rutkoski