Tortoises Quotes

Collection of famous quotes and sayings about Tortoises.

Quotes About Tortoises

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We wait for the tortoises to come. We wait for that lady who walks them. That's how art works. It's never a jackrabbit, or a racehorse. It's the tortoises that hold all the secrets. We've got to be patient enough to wait for them. ~ Pat Conroy
Tortoises quotes by Pat Conroy
One of my predecessors used to have people torn to death by wild tortoises. It was not a quick death. ~ Terry Pratchett
Tortoises quotes by Terry Pratchett
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
Tortoises quotes by Terry Pratchett
I was a broken half afloat in a great nowhere, and the trains were determined to keep me this way. Let me say this about those days, when the war was still a war, but one soon to end, when refugees were roaming and tanks lay overturned on their backs like great tortoises and one was wise to avoid the marching streams of any soldiers, be they Soviet or German: These trains we never should have trusted again, they appeared to be our only way home. And so people packed themselves into the cars quite willingly and looked the other way when they failed to arrive at their stated destinations. I marveled at our collective belief in an eventual safety. ~ Affinity Konar
Tortoises quotes by Affinity Konar
Tortoises are not well equipped for cross-country navigation. They need longer legs or shallower ditches. ~ Terry Pratchett
Tortoises quotes by Terry Pratchett
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
Tortoises quotes by Maureen Lipman
Let us accept the possibility that there is, at death, not an abrupt cessation of energy, rather a dispersal. This seems more than reasonable to me. Mind you, I've owned a series of old cars, and Im used to turning off the motor only to experience a series of rumblings and explosions that would shame many a volcano. This is the sort of thing I'm conceptualizing, a kind of clunky running-on. And just as some cars are more susceptible to this behavior, so people vary in the length of time, and the force with which, their energy sputters and gasps ... My example is overly dramatic, but it is not wholly unreasonable, and it serves to make this genetic mutation a player at the evolutionary table. You see what I'm getting at: a biologically and evolutionally sound model for the soul. (I didn't say I'd achieved it.) Let's conceive of the soul as an aura that human beings wear on their backs, cumberson as a tortoise's carapace. Some are larger than others. ~ Paul Quarrington
Tortoises quotes by Paul Quarrington
When we try to understand something, more often than not, we kill it, and now I can feel the dangers of this encroaching on me: cynicism, bitterness, and infinite sadness...It's impossible to live if you're too aware, too thoughtful. Take nature for example: everything that lives happily and too a ripe old age is not very intelligent. Tortoises live for centuries, water's immortal, and Milton Friedman's still alive. ~ Martin Page
Tortoises quotes by Martin Page
One is also reminded of how, in art, the tortoise so often overtakes the hare ... ~ Clement Greenberg
Tortoises quotes by Clement Greenberg
Bees buzzed in the bean blossoms. And the sun beat down on the upturned shell of Om.
There is also a hell for tortoises.
He was too tired to waggle his That was all you could do, waggle your legs. And stick your head out as far as it would go and wave it about in the hope that you could lever yourself over. ~ Terry Pratchett
Tortoises quotes by Terry Pratchett
I suppose I do not on the whole greatly admire the 'Tortoises' of this world. While one may appreciate their plodding steadiness and ability to survive, one suspects their lack of frankness, their capacity for treachery. And I suppose, in the end, one despises their unwillingness to take chances in the name of ambition or for the sake of a principle they claim to believe in. ~ Kazuo Ishiguro
Tortoises quotes by Kazuo Ishiguro
I desperately want to visit the Galapagos and meet some giant tortoises. ~ Lisa Graff
Tortoises quotes by Lisa Graff
... 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
Tortoises quotes by Margaret Mahy
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
Tortoises quotes by B.K.S. Iyengar
I'm a huge animal lover - I love animals to death. I've got tortoises and three dogs, and I've had a million animals in the past. I just think that we should do all we can to take care of them. ~ Roshon Fegan
Tortoises quotes by Roshon Fegan
He stepped forward, took a deep breath, and doubled over in a sneezing fit. My werewolf was allergic to tortoises. Why me? ~ Ilona Andrews
Tortoises quotes by Ilona Andrews
The tortoise moves very slowly, it moves towards whatever the goal is, to keep a democratic capitalistic society functioning. ~ Lewis Black
Tortoises quotes by Lewis Black
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
Tortoises quotes by Terry Tempest Williams
Oh, a very useful philosophical animal, your average tortoise. Outrunning metaphorical arrows, beating hares in races ... very handy. ~ Terry Pratchett
Tortoises quotes by Terry Pratchett
I love to see that Nature is so rife with life that myriads can be afforded to be sacrificed and suffered to prey on one another; that tender organizations can be so serenely squashed out of existence like pulp, - tadpoles which herons gobble up, and tortoises and toads run over in the road; and that sometimes it has rained flesh and blood! With the liability to accident, we must see how little account is to be made of it. ~ Henry David Thoreau
Tortoises quotes by Henry David Thoreau
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
Tortoises quotes by Henry David Thoreau
We live in a culture full of hares; but the tortoise always wins. ~ Dave Ramsey
Tortoises quotes by Dave Ramsey
Interesting fact: eagles are the only birds to work out how to eat tortoises. You know? They pick them up, flying up very high, and drop them on to the rocks. Smashes them right open. Amazing. ~ Terry Pratchett
Tortoises quotes by Terry Pratchett
Each spring for a period of weeks the imperial gardens were filled with prize tulips (Turkish, Dutch, Iranian), all of them shown to their best advantage. Tulips whose petals had flexed wide were held shut with fine threads hand-tied. Most of the bulbs had been grown in place, but these were supplemented by thousands of cut stems held in glass bottles; the scale of the display was further compounded by mirrors placed strategically around the garden. Each variety was marked with a label made from silver filigree. In place of every fourth flower a candle, its wick trimmed to tulip height, was set into the ground. Songbirds in gilded cages supplied the music, and hundreds of giant tortoises carrying candles on their backs lumbered through the gardens, further illuminating the display. All the guests were required to dress in colors that flattered those of the tulips. At the appointed moment a cannon sounded, the doors to the harem were flung open, and the sultan's mistresses stepped into the garden led by eunuchs bearing torches. The whole scene was repeated every night for as long as the tulips were in bloom, for as long as Sultan Ahmed managed to cling to his throne. ~ Michael Pollan
Tortoises quotes by Michael Pollan
A gigantic tortoise with a jewel-encrusted shell was glittering near the window. ~ J.K. Rowling
Tortoises quotes by J.K. Rowling
How these humans dispose themselves! Unlike anything else in creation. Or rather like everything else in creation all at once. Legs of one beast. Arms of another. Proportions all awry to a tortoise's eye. Torso too squat. Too little neck. Vastly too much leg. Hands like creatures unto themselves. Senses delicately balanced. And yet each sense dulled by mental acuity. Reason in place of a good nose. Logic instead of a tail. Faith instead of the certain knowledge of instinct. Superstition instead of a shell. ~ Verlyn Klinkenborg
Tortoises quotes by Verlyn Klinkenborg
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
Tortoises quotes by 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
Tortoises quotes by Megan Whalen Turner
Tortoises can survive for weeks without food or water, easily long enough to float in the Humboldt Current from South America to the Galapagos Islands. ~ Richard Dawkins
Tortoises quotes by Richard Dawkins
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
Tortoises quotes by Haruki Murakami
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.
Tortoises quotes by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
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
Tortoises quotes by Northrop Frye
Tortoises are incredible creatures," Dad says earnestly. "What they lack in elegance and beauty they more than make up for in the ability to curl up and defend themselves from predators."
"What, like me? ~ Holly Smale
Tortoises quotes by Holly Smale
How you start is important, very important, but in the end it is how you finish that counts. It is easier to be a self-starter than a self-finisher. The victor in the race is not the one who dashes off swiftest but the one who leads at the finish. In the race for success, speed is less important than stamina. The sticker outlasts the sprinter in life's race. In America we breed many hares but not so many tortoises. ~ B.C. Forbes
Tortoises quotes by B.C. Forbes
The predicament of a person in a restaurant who is unable to determine his or her designated restroom (e.g., turtles and tortoises). ~ Rich Hall
Tortoises quotes by Rich Hall
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
Tortoises quotes by Henry Miller
So a lorry-load of tortoises crashed into a train-load of terrapins, I thought "That's a turtle disaster". ~ Tommy Cooper
Tortoises quotes by Tommy Cooper
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
Tortoises quotes by Wole Soyinka
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
Tortoises quotes by Taiichi Ohno
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
Tortoises quotes by Freeman Dyson
A fruitfly is ancient in 40 days,
a mouse at 3 years, a horse at 30,
a man at 100, and some species of
tortoises not until 150 years. ~ Leonard Hayflick
Tortoises quotes by Leonard Hayflick
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
Tortoises quotes by Anita Brookner
Parrots, tortoises and redwoods live a longer life than men do; Men a longer life than dogs do; Dogs a longer life than love does. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay
Tortoises quotes by Edna St. Vincent Millay
In a tree-shaded pasture, seventeen adult tortoises randomly stood around. As I fed them spinach leaves sold by an opportune vendor, they tolerated my gentle strokes to their boney skullcaps and the warm black skin on their necks. It was as thin and delicate as the skin on a grandmother's hand. Their obsidian black eyes gleamed with deep wisdom and patience - Dalai Lamas on the half shell. Back ~ Kristine K. Stevens
Tortoises quotes by Kristine K. Stevens
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