Tortoises Quotes - Page 2

• 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

  Time, Thinking, Vanity

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• 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

  Sleep, Doe, Yogi

  B. K. S. Iyengar (2016). “Sparks of Divinity: The Teachings of B. K. S. Iyengar”, p.52, Shambhala Publications

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• 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

  Horse, Men, Years

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

  Terry Pratchett

  Philosophical, Animal, Race

  "Small Gods". Book by Terry Pratchett, 1992.

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• 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!' You ought to be ashamed of yourself for asking such a simple question,' added the Gryphon; and then they both sat silent and looked at poor Alice, who felt ready to sink into the earth.

  Lewis Carroll

  Simple, Turtles, Taught Us

  Lewis Carroll (2016). “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland”, p.57

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• I am successful because I have always been a tortoise. I did not come from a rich family. I was not smart in school. I did not finish school. I am not particularly talented. Yet, I am far richer than most people simply because I did not stop.

  Robert Kiyosaki

  Smart, School, Successful

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• But of course, what the eagle does not realize is that it is participating in a very crude form of natural selection.One day a tortoise will learn how to fly.

  Terry Pratchett

  Eagles, One Day, Doe

  Terry Pratchett (2008). “Small Gods: (Discworld Novel 13)”, p.10, Random House

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• The Italians say it is not necessary to be a stag; but we ought not to be a tortoise.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Stags, Ought

  Isaac Disraeli, Benjamin Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield) (1861). “Curiosities of literature”, p.255

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• 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

  Mother, Ideas, Looks

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• So a lorry-load of tortoises crashed into a train-load of terrapins, I thought "That's a turtle disaster".

  Tommy Cooper

  Funny, Humor, Turtles

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

  Lewis Black

  Moving, Goal, Democratic

  Interview with Tom Lewis, www.scpr.org. September 7, 2012.

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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

  Art, Waiting, Secret

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• 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

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Thinking

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Familiar Letters (Annotated Edition)”, p.148, Jazzybee Verlag

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• 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

  Wall, Rain, Lakes

  Zedong Mao (2008). “The Poems of Mao Zedong”, p.85, Univ of California Press

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• 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

  Science, Race, Example

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• He was, she reflected, almost rudely like a tortoise; and she was glad her friend kept none as pets or they might have suspected mockery.

  Stella Gibbons

  Pet, Might, Cold Comfort Farm

  Stella Gibbons (1977). “Cold comfort farm”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• 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

  Running, Nature, Blood

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.187, Graphic Arts Books

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• 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

  Home, Men, Race

  FaceBook post by Wole Soyinka from Feb 05, 2015

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• 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

  Running, Distance, Race

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• Deathlessness should be arrived at in a... haphazard fashion. Loving fame as much as any man, we shall carve our initials in the shell of a tortoise and turn him loose in a peat bog.

  E. B. White

  Death, Fashion, Men

  E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.91, Cornell University Press

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• 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

  Race, Waste, Causes

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• 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

  Humorous, Turtles, Restaurants

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• 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

  Get Up, Bigs, Democrat

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• I think Donald Trump and Jeb Bush are the frontrunners. It's kind of like the race between the tortoise and the bad hair.

  Jay Leno

  Thinking, Hair, Race

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• 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 P. Feynman

  Swimming, Men, Past

  Richard P. Feynman (2005). “The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman”, p.76, Hachette UK

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