Tortoise Quotes

Come, thou tortoise! ~ William Shakespeare

Om rubed his head. This wasn't god-like thinking. It seemed simpler when you were up here. It was all a game. You forgot that it wasn't a game down there. People died. Bits got chopped off. We're like eagles up here, he thought. Sometimes we show tortoise how to fly. Then we let go. ~ Terry Pratchett

During dinner a sea turtle stopped by for a visit. At three or four feet in length... the turtle swam alongside for about twenty minutes, its head bobbing just above the surface of the water. Then with laughing eyes the turtle passed me..being left behind by a turtle pricked up my competitive nature. I pulled harder trying to keep up, but I couldn't catch the turtle. Soon I was reduced to laughter. " I am in the North Atlantic in a rowboat, racing a turtle...and loosing. Okay, so they can swim thirty miles an hour. Out here, I am the tortoise and it's the hare. ~ Tori Murden McClure

Nothing got more serious than allowing a tortoise to crawl across your kitchen floor. ~ J. Lynn

You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look. ~ Terry Pratchett

The idea of God as an immense tortoise – deliberate, reptilian, silent, and hard shelled – cheered him. ~ Mark Beauregard

A tortoise is, I suppose, a Jewish pet. It knows its place. Out on the lawn. It doesn't bark. It doesn't tear the Dralon. ~ Maureen Lipman

Winds flap the sail, tortoise and snake are silent, a great plan looms. A bridge will fly over this moat dug by heaven and be a road from north to south. We will make a stone wall against the upper river to the west and hold back steamy clouds and rain of Wu peaks. Over tall chasms will be a calm lake, and if the goddess of these mountains is not dead she will marvel at the changed world. ~ Mao Zedong

when I don't have anything to read, I feel like a tortoise without a shell or a boat without an anchor. There is nothing to hide under. Nowhere to stop and rest. When I don't have a book, there is nowhere good or interesting to be, there is nobody to care about, nothing to hope for, and nothing to puzzle over. When I do have something to read, it keeps me breathing. It's the reward for all the other things. It's the think to look forward to, the reason for doing my day. ~ E.R. Frank

Down the Peninsula at Cypress Lawn Cemetery, a woman in a paisley turban climbed out of a battered automobile and trudged up the hillside to a new grave.
She stood there for a moment, humming to herself, then removed a joint from a tortoise-shell cigarette case and laid it gently on the grave.
"Have fun," she smiled. "It's Colombian. ~ Armistead Maupin

One is also reminded of how, in art, the tortoise so often overtakes the hare ... ~ Clement Greenberg

... But don't be late, Troy, or I'll ... " She hesitated and laughed, not entirely happily. "I don't suppose I'll ever need to worry about you again, will I? I don't suppose I've ever needed to worry over a magician."
"There are always car accidents," Tabitha declared cheerfully. "A car could come around the corner and ... wallop! You'd need a terrific magician to get out of that one ... "
"Or eagles dropping tortoises," Troy added, looking amused. "That happened in Ancient Greece, you know. An eagle dropped a tortoise on some dramatist and killed him."
"No eagles or tortoises here," said Tabitha, "but a bit could fall off a plane. ~ Margaret Mahy

A friend had told him that a man carried his pain like a tortoise carried his shell. ~ Anonymous

The sleeping tortoise takes all its limbs into its carapace. So does the yogi: going back into himself he does not see anything worldly any longer, he makes peace in himself. ~ B.K.S. Iyengar

You do not know me,' said Tortoise. 'I am a changed man. I have learned that a man who makes trouble for others makes trouble for himself. ~ Chinua Achebe

Everything must have a beginning, to speak in Sanchean phrase; and that beginning must be linked to something that went before. The Hindus give the world an elephant to support it, but they make the elephant stand upon a tortoise. ~ Mary Shelley

I insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. I read and think. So I do more reading and thinking, and make less impulse decisions than most people in business. I do it because I like this kind of life. ~ Warren Buffett

Sept.17 (1780). When we call loudly thro' the speaking-trumpet to Timothy ( the tortoise), he does not seem to regard the noise. Sept.18. Timothy eats heartily. Oct.3. No ring-ouzels seen this autumn yet. Timothy very dull. ~ Sylvia Townsend Warner

It is not easy to make our lives respectable by any course of activity. We must repeatedly withdraw into our shells of thought, like the tortoise, somewhat helplessly; yet there is more than philosophy in that. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Clever talk is absolutely worthless. All you do in the process is lose yourself. And to lose yourself is a sin. One has to be able to crawl completely inside oneself, like a tortoise. ~ Hermann Hesse

The tortoise moves very slowly, it moves towards whatever the goal is, to keep a democratic capitalistic society functioning. ~ Lewis Black

When we were little," the Mock Turtle went on at last, more calmly, though still sobbing a little now and then, "we went to school in the sea. The master was an old Turtle - we used to call him Tortoise -"
"Why did you call him Tortoise, if he wasn't one?" Alice asked.
"We called him Tortoise because he taught us," said the Mock Turtle angrily: "really you are very dull! ~ Lewis Carroll

Tortoise steps, slow steps, four steps like a tank with a tail dragging in the sand.
Tortoise steps, land based, land locked, dusty like the desert tortoise herself, fenced in, a prisoner on her own reservation
teaching us the slow art of revolutionary patience. ~ Terry Tempest Williams

May with its light behaving
Stirs vessel, eye and limb,
The singular and sad
Are willing to recover,
And to each swan-delighting river
The careless picnics come
In living white and red.

Our dead, remote and hooded,
In hollows rest, but we
From their vague woods have broken,
Forests where children meet
And the white angel-vampires flit,
Stand now with shaded eye,
The dangerous apple taken.

The real world lies before us,
Brave motions of the young,
Abundant wish for death,
The pleasing, pleasured, haunted:
A dying Master sinks tormented
In his admirers' ring,
The unjust walk the earth.

And love that makes impatient
Tortoise and roe, that lays
The blonde beside the dark,
Urges upon our blood,
Before the evil and the good
How insufficient is
Touch, endearment, look. ~ W. H. Auden

Resistance outwits the amateur with the oldest trick in the book: It uses his own enthusiasm against him. Resistance gets us to plunge into a project with an overambitious and unrealistic timetable for its completion. It knows we can't sustain that level of intensity. We will hit the wall. We will crash.
The professional, on the other hand, understands delayed gratification. He is the ant, not the grasshopper; the tortoise, not the hare ... The professional arms himself with patience, not only to give the stars time to align in his career, but to keep himself from flaming out in each individual work. He knows that any job, whether it's a novel or kitchen remodel, takes twice as long as he thinks and costs twice as much. He accepts that. He recognizes it as reality. ~ Steven Pressfield

If we increase r [in a logistic map] even more, we will eventually force the system into a period-8 limit cycle, then a period-16 cycle, and so on. The amount that we have to increase r to get another period doubling gets smaller and smaller for each new bifurcation. This cascade of period doublings is reminiscent of the race between Achilles and the tortoise, in that an infinite number of bifurcations (or time steps in the race) can be confined to a local region of finite size. At a very special critical value, the dynamical system will fall into what is essentially an infinite-period limit cycle. This is chaos. ~ Gary William Flake

The governmental tortoise cannot keep up with the technological hare. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

Now, if the principle of toleration were once admitted into classical education - if it were admitted that the great object is to read and enjoy a language, and the stress of the teaching were placed on the few things absolutely essential to this result, if the tortoise were allowed time to creep, and the bird permitted to fly, and the fish to swim, towards the enchanted and divine sources of Helicon - all might in their own way arrive there, and rejoice in its flowers, its beauty, and its coolness. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

My personality is similar to a tortoise. Slow, patient, persevere but confirm to win. ~ Shivam Chaudhary

But when oxidation nibbles more slowly - more delicately, like a tortoise - at the world around us, without a flame, we call it rust and we sometimes scarcely notice as it goes about its business consuming everything from hairpins to whole civilizations. ~ Alan Bradley

Oh, a very useful philosophical animal, your average tortoise. Outrunning metaphorical arrows, beating hares in races ... very handy. ~ Terry Pratchett

The only reason you helped me out was because I'm a tortoise and my tormentors were children. To intervene between a tortoise and children isn't likely to bring about much in the way of repercussions. What did you give them - five coppers? That's big money to a child, but it's not much skin off your back, is it? I thought you'd put up a bit more than that. Miserly isn't the word. How do you think it makes me feel? Five coppers for my life. For you it was just a whim of the moment. 'A few coppers to rescue a tortoise - oh, hell, why not?' But suppose it wasn't children teasing a tortoise but, say, a group of rowdy fishermen tormenting some sickly beggar. Would you have offered so much as a single copper? Hardly. You would have scowled and hurried past, not wanting to get involved. ~ Osamu Dazai

Good habits are the basic tools that will determine whether you are a tortoise
or hare in life! ~ Lucas Remmerswaal

Giving the tortoise a little wave, I kind of felt stupid afterward for doing so. It just stuck its head back in its green and brown shell. "That's a very interesting pet."
"And those are very interesting shorts." His gaze dropped. "What are they?" Leaning forward his eyes narrowed and I stiffened. "Pizza slices?"
Heat swamped my cheeks. "They're ice cream cones."
"Huh. I like them." Straightening, his gaze drifted up me slowly, leaving an unfamiliar wake of heat behind. "A lot. ~ J. Lynn

Nature is slow, but sure; she works no faster than need be; she is the tortoise that wins the race by her perseverance. ~ Henry David Thoreau

An upturned tortoise is the ninth most pathetic thing in the entire multiverse. ~ Terry Pratchett

Now I'm no biologist, but it seems to make a lot of sense that slow lives, as well as being enjoyable, are long lives. One only has to think of the example of the tortoise for proof of this theory from the animal world. ~ Tom Hodgkinson

We live in a culture full of hares; but the tortoise always wins. ~ Dave Ramsey

Thought and science are therefore raising problems which their terms of study can never answer, many of which are doubtless problems only for thought. The trisection of an angle is similarly an insoluble problem only for compass and straight-edge construction, and Achilles cannot overtake the tortoise so long as their progress is considered piecemeal, endlessly having the distance between them. However, as it is not Achilles but the method of measurement which fails to catch up with the tortoise, so it is not man but his method of thought which fails to find fulfillment in experience. ~ Alan W. Watts

I deal with writer's block by lowering my expectations. I think the trouble starts when you sit down to write and imagine that you will achieve something magical and magnificent - and when you don't, panic sets in. The solution is never to sit down and imagine that you will achieve something magical and magnificent. I write a little bit, almost every day, and if it results in two or three or (on a good day) four good paragraphs, I consider myself a lucky man. Never try to be the hare. All hail the tortoise. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

Subjectively, a gnat doubtless feels that its span of a few days is a reasonably long lifetime. A tortoise, with its span of several hundred years, would feel subjectively the same as the gnat. Not so long ago the life expectancy of the average man was about forty-five years. Today it is from sixty-five to seventy years, but subjectively the years are faster, and death, when it comes, is always all too soon. ~ Alan W. Watts

Love should last a lifetime. But not the lifetime of a giant tortoise. More like the lifespan of a gastrotrich. ~ Jarod Kintz

Nice plan. Take the gullible outsiders, walk them around for a bit, then feed them to the giant tortoise. ~ Ilona Andrews

In a recent interview, Jeb Bush revealed that his brother George gave him the nickname 'tortoise' because he's making slow, steady progress. Though I think the bigger story here is that compared to George, Jeb is the slow one. ~ Jimmy Fallon

Stiff shoulders humped over the writing-table, and the ache of a heart slow to move. A tortoise heart. ~ J.M. Coetzee

A gigantic tortoise with a jewel-encrusted shell was glittering near the window. ~ J.K. Rowling

A woman needs a man like a tortoise needs a crah helmet. ~ Jeanette E. Mathews

Turd-eating son of a flying tortoise ~ Diana Gabaldon

Parvaneh's belly is now so big that she looks like a giant tortoise when she heaves herself down into a squatting position, one hand on the gravestone and the other hooked around Patrick's arm. Not that Ove dares bring up the giant tortoise metaphor, of course. There are more pleasant ways of killing oneself, he feels. ~ Fredrik Backman

But as the work proceeded I was continually reminded of the fable about the elephant and the tortoise. Having constructed an elephant upon which the mathematical world could rest, I found the elephant tottering, and proceeded to construct a tortoise to keep the elephant from falling. But the tortoise was not more secure than the elephant, and after some twenty years of very arduous toil, I came to the conclusion that there was nothing more that I could do in the way of making mathematical knowledge indubitable. ~ Bertrand Russell

It was a race between the tortoise and the hare, but the tortoise had just enough head start, and he had the magus to drag him along. ~ Megan Whalen Turner

Love has made him surprise himself. He would never have believed it possible, but it's turned out that he is a man who can walk up to a closed door on a murky November day, wearing his one good suit, and knock without hesitation, waiting while the rain comes down around him, even though he's not wanted. He can do this and not think twice, just the way he can spend hours watching a wounded cedar beetle and weep over its rare beauty, as well as its agony.

Richard is certain that other species fall in love - primates, of course, and canines - but he has wondered about his beetles. There are people who would surely get a chuckle out of the mere suggestion, but in Richard's opinion it's pure vanity to presume that love exists only on our terms. A red leaf may be the universe for the tortoise beetle or the ladybird. A single touch the ecstasy of a lifetime. And so, here he is, in love despite everything. It is he, stupider than any beetle, and far more obstinate, who has traveled three thousand miles, even though he fully expects to be turned away. ~ Alice Hoffman

You'll find a man can live without his money as merrily as a tortoise without its head, or a wasp without its body." '"But ~ Anne Bronte

Runners and yogis are alike in lots of ways, and not just because some of us need yoga to unkink what running jams. Runners and yogis are also alike because of this tortoise shell idea, this 'home' we can access inside ourselves. ~ Kristin Armstrong

The "world" - the word always makes me think of a tortoise and elephants tirelessly supporting a gigantic disc. The elephants have no knowledge of the tortoise's role, the tortoise unable to see what the elephants are doing. And neither is the least aware of the world on their backs. ~ Haruki Murakami

The slow philosophy is not about doing everything in tortoise mode. It's less about the speed and more about investing the right amount of time and attention in the problem so you solve it. ~ Carl Honore

Mary Hepburn was meanwhile murdering herself up in her room, lying on her bed with the polyethylene sheath of her "Jackie dress" swapped around her head. The sheath was now all steamed up inside, and she hallucinated that she was a great land tortoise lying on its back in the hot and humid hold of a sailing ship of long ago. She pawed the air in perfect futility, just as a land tortoise on its back would have done.

As she had often told her students, sailing ships bound out across the Pacific used to stop off in the Galàpagos Islands to capture defenseless tortoises, who could live on their backs without food or water for months. They were so slow and tame and huge and plentiful. The sailors would capsize them without fear of being bitten or clawed. then they would drag them down to waiting longboats on the shore, using the animals' own useless suits of armor for sleds.

They would store them on their backs in the dark paying no further attention to them until it was time for them to be eaten. the beauty of the tortoises to the sailors was that they were fresh meat which did not have to be refrigerated or eaten right away. ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

We have been led to imagine all sorts of things infinitely more marvelous than the imagining of poets and dreamers of the past. It shows that the imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man. For instance, how much more remarkable it is for us all to be stuck-half of us upside down-by a mysterious attraction, to a spinning ball that has been swinging in space for billions of years, than to be carried on the back of an elephant supported on a tortoise swimming in a bottomless sea. ~ Richard Feynman

The fable says that the tortoise won in the end, which is consoling, but the hare shows a good deal of speed and few signs of tiring. ~ Northrop Frye

Is there some lesson on how to be friends?
I think what it means is that central to living
a life that is good is a life that's forgiving.
We're creatures of contact regardless of whether
we kiss or we wound. Still, we must come together.
Though it may spell destruction, we still ask for more
since it beats staying dry but so lonely on shore.
So we make ourselves open while knowing full well
it's essentially saying please, come pierce my shell. ~ David Rakoff

Galapagos tortoise," she said. "I'm one hundred and seven years old." "Huh. And you don't look a day over a hundred and five," I said. ~ James Patterson

Kindness, for people like you, is nothing more than a minor diversion. A little titillation. You rescued me because I'm a tortoise. You put up money because they were children. But a sickly beggar and rowdy fishermen? That would be another story altogether. To have the smelly wind of real life blowing in your face would be more than you could bear. That's what we call being a snob, ~ Osamu Dazai

My name," I tell Wilbur in the most dignified voice I can find, "Was inspired by Harriet Quimby, the first female American pilot and the first woman ever to cross the Channel in an aeroplane. My mother chose it to represent freedom and bravery and independence, and she gave it to me just before she died."
There's a short pause while Wilbur looks appropriately moved. Then Dad says, "Who told you that?"
"Annabel did."
"Well, it's not true at all. You were named after Harriet the tortoise, the second longest living tortoise in the world."
There's a silence while I stare at Dad and Annabel puts her head in her hands so abruptly that the pen starts to leak into her collar. "Richard," she moans quietly.
"A tortoise?" I repeat in dismay. "I'm named after a tortoise? What the hell is a tortoise supposed to represent?"
"Longevity? ~ Holly Smale

The tortoise is a ground-living creature. It is impossible to live nearer the ground without being under it. Its horizons are a few inches away. It has about as good a turn of speed as you need to hunt down a lettuce. It has survived while the rest of evolution flowed past it by being, on the whole, no threat to anyone and too much trouble to eat. ~ Terry Pratchett

Tortoise, Tortoise get bigger, bigger. Come on Tortoise grow up, puff up, shoot up! Spring up, Blow up swell up! Gorge! Guzzle! Stuff! Gulp! Put on fat, Tortoise, Put on fat! get on, Get on! Gobble food!! ~ Roald Dahl

Warren Buffett is one of the best learning machines on this earth. The turtles which outrun the hares are learning machines. If you stop learning in this world, the world rushes right by you. ~ Lucas Remmerswaal

Many parks in Florida have information kiosks with colorful enamel signs showing the special flora and fauna in the park. The gopher tortoise, the scrub jay, the indigo snake. At no park with an indigo snake on its kiosk signs could I find an indigo. ~ Padgett Powell

People are eager to walk in other people's pair of shoes that does not fit them. The result is that, their dreams begin to imitate a "tortoise" walk and that I guess is already uncomfortable! ~ Israelmore Ayivor

The hare of history once more overtakes the tortoise of art. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

In there?'
She nodded.
'You want us to go into the tortoise?'
Another nod.
'It's alive.'
Another nod. ~ Ilona Andrews

I would not say no to a tortoise, I said. ~ Jessica Grant

It turned out to be a young Dasypus novemcinctus, a nine-banded armadillo, about the size of a small loaf of bread. Although they were becoming more common in Texas, I'd never seen one up close before. Anatomically speaking, it resembled the unhappy melding of an anteater (the face), a mule (the ears), and a tortoise (the carapace). I thought it overall an unlucky creature in the looks department, but Granddaddy once said that to apply a human definition of beauty to an animal that had managed to thrive for millions of years was both unscientific and foolish. ~ Jacqueline Kelly

So Zeno is most famous for his tortoise paradox. Let us imagine that you are in a race with a tortoise. The tortoise has a ten-yard head start. In the time it takes you to run that ten yards, the tortoise has moved one yard. And then in the time it takes you to make up that distance, the tortoise goes a bit farther, and so on forever. You are faster than the tortoise but you can never catch him; you can only decrease his lead. ~ John Green

Old people who live too long come to resemble turtles. As though time turned in a curve, and down they go to the reptiles again. Not the little wet naked frog they were born. But the tortoise. Cold eyes, sagging circles of skin, the nose becomes beak. The shell of sleep. ~ Josephine Winslow Johnson

We must forget bodily consciousness like a deer which is infatuated by music.
We must look up to God, as the young ones of a tortoise look up to their mother.
As a fountain rises upwards, even so must one's spirit rise to God.
One should entertain no idea whatsoever, except that of God. ~ Tukaram

He obliterates things, she realized. He shatters them. They think they've won because he's a bit vague and he waffles, but that only goes so far. It's his shell, like a tortoise, if a tortoise was soft on the outside and dangerous on the inside. That's how the Time War ended: he got to the bottom of his patience, and he took two entire civilisations out of the universe and lock them away, and one of them was his own. That's how sharp his sense of obligation is.
And he lives like that. He does it all the time. ~ Nick Harkaway

Whenever he's tried to dig out such secrets from her behind her mother's back, she has retreated like a tortoise into her child's shell. Children are quick to sense a threat. (From "Crows" by Mrinal Pande) ~ Keerti Ramachandra

I had no time to make a world of my own: I had to stay fixed like Atlas, my feet on the elephant's back and the elephant on the tortoise's back. To inquire on what the tortoise stood would be to go mad. ~ Henry Miller

...It's pure vanity to presume that love exists only on our terms. A red lead may be the universe for the tortoise beetle or the ladybird. A single touch the ecstasy of a lifetime. (180) ~ Alice Hoffman

He envied Miss Barrace at any rate her power of not being. She seemed, with little cries and protests and quick recognitions, movements like the darts of some fine high-feathered free-pecking bird, to stand before life as before some full shop-window. You could fairly hear, as she selected and pointed, the tap of her tortoise-shell against the glass. ~ Henry James

As children, we were given a choice between the talented but erratic hare and the plodding but steady tortoise. The lesson was supposed to be that slow and steady wins the race. But, really, did any of us ever want to be the tortoise? No, we just wanted to be a less foolish hare. We wanted to be swift as the wind and a bit more strategic - say, not taking quite so many snoozes before the finish line. After all, everyone knows you have to show up in order to win. The story of the tortoise and the hare, in trying to put forward the power of effort, gave effort a bad name. It reinforced the image that effort is for the plodders and suggested that in rare instances, when talented people dropped the ball, the plodder could sneak through. ~ Carol S. Dweck

We called him Tortoise because he taught us. ~ Lewis Carroll

Remember the story of the tortoise and the hare? While many investors have 'sprinted' toward their investment goals, success is most often found by consistent action, not big action. ~ Brandon Turner

There is only one home to the life of a river-mussel; there is only one home to the life of a tortoise; there is only one shell to the soul of man: there is only one world to the spirit of our race. If that world leaves its course and smashes on boulders of the great void, whose world will give us shelter? ~ Wole Soyinka

Since the well-known victory over the hare by the tortoise, the descendants of the tortoise think themselves miracles of speed. ~ Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach

The slower but consistent tortoise causes less waste and is more desirable than the speedy hare that races ahead and then stops occasionally to doze. The Toyota Production System can be realized only when all the workers become tortoises. ~ Taiichi Ohno

The elephant which supports the world is called Muha-pudma, and the the tortoise which supports the elephant is called Chukwa. In some of the Eastern mythologies we are told that the world stands on the backs of eight elephants, called Achtequed-jams. ~ E. Cobham Brewer

Graff was floating on his back in the pool when George Wall and I went outside. His brown belly swelled above its surface like the humpback of a Galapagos tortoise. Mrs. Graff, fully clothed, was sitting by herself in a sunny corner. Her black dress and black hair seemed to annul the sunlight. Her face and body had the distinction that takes the place of beauty in people who have suffered long and hard. ~ Ross Macdonald

What anguish! Cincinnatus, what anguish! What stone anguish, Cincinnatus - the merciless bong of the clock, and the obese spider, and the yellow walls, and the roughness of the black wool blanket. The skim on the chocolate. Pluck it with two fingers at the very center and snatch it whole from the surface, no longer a flat covering, but a wrinkled brown little skirt. The liquid is tepid underneath, sweetish and stagnant. Three slices of toast with tortoise shell burns. A round pat of butter embossed with the monogram of the director. What anguish, Cincinnatus, how many crumbs in the bed! ~ Vladimir Nabokov

When I was a boy in England long ago, people who traveled on
trains with dogs had to pay for a dog ticket. The question arose
whether I needed to buy a dog ticket when I was traveling with a
tortoise. The conductor on the train gave me the answer: Cats is
dogs and rabbits is dogs but tortoises is insects and travel free
according. ~ Freeman Dyson

I had no idea what humans were capable of. I heard they were crafty, but how are they able to do such things?
You mean harness light and water? Speedy asked. Change the weather?
Yes.
It's only the beginning, Speedy said. There are more marvels waiting. Some not so marvelous.
Such as?
Be not in haste, said the tortoise.
There is nothing here but time.
If you live long enough, you will see.
Of course, though, you will see them from your cage.
Live long enough? I asked. Are there mortal dangers here?
The tortoise chuckled.
The boy doesn't always take very good care of his prisoners, Rex the lizard chimed in.
What do you mean? He doesn't feed us enough?
Sometimes he doesn't understand what we need to survive, Rex answered. Sometimes he plays too rough.
How can a creature able to bend the laws of nature be so cruel? I asked. ~ Patrick Jennings

Democrats are like a big tortoise that's on its back and can't get up; you can't make jokes about that. ~ Lewis Black

106When I don't have anything to read, I feel like a tortoise without a shell or a boat without an anchor. There is nothing to hide under. Nowhere to stop and rest. When I don't have a book, there is nowhere good or interesting to be, there is nobody to care about, nothing to hope for, and nothing to puzzle over. When I do have something to read, it keeps me breathing. It's the reward for all the other things. It's the thing to look forward to, the reason for doing my day."
p. 177, Dime ~ E.R. Frank

The developers, if they decide to move a tortoise, have to pay the long-term costs for enhancing the areas that take care of the tortoise, and it gives us the opportunity to manage an area that is going to be protected. ~ Gale Norton

Surround Yourself with Others Who Are Already Doing What You Want to Do

My all-time favorite success tip for people who tend to hesitate excessively is to regularly interact with people who are already successfully doing what you want to do. Why will this help you moderate your tortoise tendencies? Emotions, thoughts, and behaviors all tend to be socially contagious. Therefore, if you surround yourself with people who are already acting in the ways you need to act, this will likely rub off on you. You'll be more likely to take action.
Another key reason for interacting with others who are already succeeding in your field is that many of the key pieces of information that will help you succeed won't be shared in books or other public forums. They're likely passed from person to person. You'll get to know these insider secrets only by befriending successful people. ~ Alice Boyes

The second [argument about motion] is the so-called Achilles, and it amounts to this, that in a race the quickest runner can never overtake the slowest, since the pursuer must first reach the point whence the pursued started, so that the slower must always hold a lead.
Statement of the Achilles and the Tortoise paradox in the relation of the discrete to the continuous.; perhaps the earliest example of the reductio ad absurdum method of proof. ~ Zeno Of Elea

If the hare makes too many missteps and has to keep adjusting, the tortoise wins. If the tortoise spends too much time planning each step, the hare wins. ~ Paul Kalanithi

In real life, it is the hare who wins. Every time. Look around you. And in any case it is my contention that Aesop was writing for the tortoise market. Hares have no time to read. They are too busy winning the game. ~ Anita Brookner

Drawing a breath, I flung myself across the door sill. That was the artless way I navigated the hurdles of girlhood. Everyone thought I was a plucky girl, but in truth, I wasn't as fearless as everyone assumed. I had the temperament of a tortoise. Whatever dread, fright, or bump appeared in my path, I wanted nothing more than to drop in my tracks and hide. If you must err, do so on the side of audacity. That was the little slogan I'd devised for myself. For some time now, it had helped me to hurl myself over door sills. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

The ship started a school of fliers that skipped along the wave tops like shining silver coins.
"These are the ghosts of treasures ost at sea," the cook went on, "the murder things, emeralds and diamonds and gold; the sins of men, committed for them, stick to them and make them haunt the ocean. Ah! It's a poor thing if a sailor will not make a grand tale about it."
Henry pointed to a great tortoise asleep on the surface. "And what is the tale of the turtles?" He asked.
"Nothing; only food ... ~ John Steinbeck