Quotes & Sayings About Turtles

I will find you twenty lascivious turtles ere one chaste man. — William Shakespeare

That night I dreamed about flying turtles and forest fires and fucking the earth ... The next morning I awoke and I listened to the tree company tearing away the woods and the timber. I heard the chainsaws ripping outside my open window and I heard the dynamite exploding all the mountain tops away for the black rock below. And instead of feeling sad like I did most mornings, I felt something else now. I found myself saying, 'Explode. Explode you mountains. Rip them down you fuckers. Take this stinking dirt and leave this land with hatred and death. — Scott McClanahan

JOHNNA: When a Cheyenne baby is born, their umbilical cord is dried and sewn into this pouch. Turtles for girls, lizards for boys. And we wear it for the rest of our lives. JEAN: Wow. JOHNNA: Because if we lose it, our souls belong nowhere and after we die our souls will walk the Earth looking for where we belong. — Tracy Letts

No opinion. They're condescending. (on turtles) — Amy Poehler

Men who wear turtlenecks look like turtles. — Doris Lilly

Hear the mellow wedding bells, Golden bells! What a world of happiness their harmony foretells Through the balmy air of night How they ring out their delight! From the molten golden notes, And all in tune What a liquid ditty floats To the turtle-dove that listens while she gloats On the moon! — Edgar Allan Poe

Turtles can breathe through their butts — Shelly Crane

To test. Would weightlessness put them off their game? It did. The turtles moved "slowly and insecurely" and did not attack a piece of bait placed directly in front of them. Then again, the water in which they swam was repeatedly floating up out of the jar and forming an "ovoid cupola." Who could eat? Von Beckh quickly moved on from turtles to Argentinean pilots. Under the section heading "Experiments with Human Subjects" - a heading that, were I a doctor previously employed by Nazi Germany, I might have rephrased - von Beckh reports on the efforts of the pilots to mark X's inside small boxes during regular and weightless flight. During weightlessness, many of the letters strayed from the boxes, indicating that pilots might experience difficulties maneuvering their planes and doing crossword puzzles during air battles. The following year, von Beckh was recruited by the Aeromedical Research Laboratory at Holloman Air Force — Mary Roach

We could all be in a turtle's dream, in outer space! — Frank Reynolds

Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time tells the story of a cosmologist whose speech is interrupted by a little old lady who informs him that the universe rests on the back of a turtle. Ah, yes, madame, the scientist replies, but what does the turtle rest on? The old lady shoots back: You can't trick me, young man. It's nothing but turtles, turtles, turtles, all the way down. — George Will

I eat like a kid. I like Chief Boyardee. Their Ravioli, but they have some stuff I've never seen in the real Italian food world. You ever been in a nice Italian restaurant? Hi how are you? Ummm id like to start with a nice bottle of Chanti and a couple of Caesar Salads and umm I'm going to have the Beef a'ronni. And some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the lady. — Brian Regan

The turtle stands on a turtle, which stands on a turtle. That's the universe in whole, boy. It's turtles all the way down. — Bill Willingham

I grew up watching 'Power Rangers,' 'Ninja Turtles', 'Batman.' You name it, I was a huge fan. And that's what I used to play with my friends. We would have the masks and the swords and pretend we had super powers. — Robbie Amell

I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle-dove, and am still on their trail. Many are the travellers I have spoken concerning them, describing their tracks and what calls they answered to. I have met one or two who had heard the hound, and the tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove disappear behind a cloud, and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they had lost them themselves. — Henry David Thoreau

The sign said 'The Green Turtle, Chelonia myadas, is the source of turtle soup ... ' I am the source of William G. soup if it comes to that. Everyone is the source of his or her kind of soup. In a town as big as London, that's a lot of soup walking around. — Russell Hoban

Sleep just go to sleep.
Cam lived across the hall?
You need to get up early. Go to sleep.
How in the world was that possible? He was everywhere I went.
Go to sleep.
And why did he have a pet turtle and did he seriously name it after the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, because that was kind of funny.
Morning's going to come soon.
Did he only wear a shirt during class? Oh my God, he seriously lived across the hall. Jacob was going to flip ... and probably move in. That would be fun. I really liked Jacob, but I had a feeling he'd borrow my clothes.
Go the fuck to sleep. — J. Lynn

I am going where turtles win
I am going
where conmen puke and die
Down the sad esplanades
of the official world. — Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Turtles have always been my sigil, I suppose. When I was a kid, growing up in Bayonne, NJ, I lived in a federal housing project, and we were not allowed to have a dog or cats. The only pets I could have were turtles. So, I had an entire toy castle filled with dime-store turtles. I gave them all names, and since they were living in a toy castle, I decided they were all knights and kingsand I made up stories about how they killed each other and betrayed each other and fought for the kingdom. So, Game of Thrones, actually began with turtles. I decided later to recast it with actual human beings. — George R R Martin

Like if Leonardo from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles started being all bummed out about everything. How were we going to kick arse if our Leonardo was wearing a black eye-band instead of a blue one? — Dougie Poynter

Gregori leaned forward. "Can you believe it? We're all a bunch of mutants! Just like the Ninja Turtles."
Angus blinked. "We - we're like ... turtles?"
Gregori burst out lauging.
Ian shook his head, grinning.
Connor snorted. "Nay. We have vampire DNA. No turtles. — Kerrelyn Sparks

It's turtles all the way down. — William James

Don't eat shrimp - it's one of the most unsustainable fish. For every pound that's caught, 10 or 20 pounds of other stuff is killed and dumped back overboard. It's the number one killer of juvenile sea turtles in Mexico. Two good sustainable seafood guides that I'd recommend are from the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Blue Ocean Institute. — Philippe Cousteau Jr.

At the pet store he picked out two painted turtles, each about as big around as a mayonnaise-jar lid. He bought them a large kidney shaped dish that had its own little island, a plastic palm tree, some aquatic plants, and a snail. The snail, presumably, to bolster the self-esteem of the turtles: "You think we're slow? Look at that guy." To store up the snail's morale in the same way, there was a rock. — Christopher Moore

The Giant Ocean Tank, with its 52 large viewing windows, is the main attraction here. Myrtle, a giant green sea turtle, is one of the tank's most popular animals, along with sharks, rays and more than 100 other species. The Aquarium Medical Center is a working animal hospital exhibit that allows visitors to observe veterinarians examining and treating sea creatures. — John Grant

A turtle does come in it's own bowl — Mike Dirnt

Well, I guess we're off, like a herd of mad turtles as my dad used to say. — Margaret Weis

Kansas is not easily impressed. It has seen houses fly and cattle soar. When funnel clouds walk through the wheat, big hail falls behind. As the biggest stones melt, turtles and mice and fish and even men can be seen frozen inside. And Kansas is not surprised.
Henry York had seen things in Kansas, things he didn't think belonged in this world. Things that didn't. Kansas hadn't flinched. — N.D. Wilson

If I was good each week, my father would take me to a different pet store each Saturday. I had a snake, horny toads, turtles, lizards, rabbits, guinea pigs ... I kept my alligator in the bathtub until it got too big. — Dick Van Patten

As the class went through the Greeks and the Romans and the Renaissance painters, (who were easy enough to remember if you'd ever seen Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) there was more dick on display than in a locker room. — K.A. Mitchell

Be like the turtle. If he didn't stick his neck out, he wouldn't get anywhere at all. — Harvey MacKay

Pandora, meet my brothers, Leonardo and Michelangelo."
"Like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?" she couldn't resist asking.
"Like the Renaissance painters," Leo snapped. He exchanged a snarl with his twin brother. "I seriously hate those damned turtles. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I think the law as it is today probably does prohibit an off-reservation casino, but there is uniqueness to Turtle Mountain and there is uniqueness to the state, and these things need to be looked at. — Bill Johnson

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

I love traveling and seeing new things, learning the histories of different cultures. But I've always wanted to go to the Galapagos to see the giant turtles. — Mikaela Shiffrin

An alternative, favored by those of a religious persuasion, was that A'Tuin was crawling from the Birthplace to the Time of Mating, as were all the stars in the sky which were, obviously, also carried by giant turtles. When they arrived they would briefly and passionately mate, for the first and only time, and from that fiery union new turtles would be born to carry a new pattern of worlds. This was known as the Big Bang hypothesis. — Terry Pratchett

Every Halloween for six years, I was a Ninja Turtle, and Mikey was my favorite. The turtles really made me who I am today. They got me into martial arts, meditation, surfing, skateboarding; big time influence on who I am today. — Greg Cipes

The baby turtles are turning away from the ocean. It's easy to see why. The black waves lap up the moonbeams, and the starlight on the inky surface of the water gives off such a pale glow when you compare it to the megawatt flashlights that Raffy is swirling in hypnotic circles. — Karen Russell

I would love to go help baby sea turtles back into the ocean after hatching in Mexico. — Tamara Feldman

Lift your eyes, straighten your back, let fear and pain walk away like the turtles they are. — Victor Robert Lee

Jack Sparrow: How did you get here?

Will Turner: Sea turtles, mate. A pair of them strapped to my feet.

Jack Sparrow: Not so easy, is it? — Jack Sparrow

He wanted her to stay, to lie in their boat with him and comfort him, but she vanished when he tried to hold her, and it was getting dark and Green rising, a baleful jade eye. There were water bottles in the racks; but the boat was gone and the salt sea with it, the sea that was a river called Gyoll in which corpses floated, savaged by big turtles with beaks like the beaks of parrots, the river that circled with whorl, the river over which the stars never set. He had come to the end of that river, and it was too — Gene Wolfe

The federal government is like a handicapped turtle trying to crawl around and keep up with the rabbit, which is technology. — Jim Breithaupt

I have always brought home stray animals - everything from squirrels to wild rabbits to foxes and turtles. — Amy Weber

Eating dinner with conservation biologists was like walking through a minefield of ethical decisions: grasslands have been overgrazed by steer raised for beef, and all cattle emit greenhouse gases though enteric fermentation; the poop from industrially raised chickens poisons the Chesapeake; the Amazon has been slashed and burned for soy
and don't even mention seafood. To this bunch of herpetologists, the sin of ordering shrimp lay in the bycatch
young fish, and especially sea turtles, caught in the nets and discarded, dead or dying. — Joe Roman

The lesson of every extinction, says the Smithsonian's Doug Erwin, is that we can't predict what the world will be 5 million years later by looking at the survivors.
There will be plenty of surprises. Let's face it: who would've predicted the existence of turtles? Who would ever have imagined that an organism would essentially turn itself inside out, pulling its shoulder girdle inside its ribs to form a carapace? If turtles didn't exist, no vertebrate biologist would've suggested that anything would do that: he'd have been laughed out of town. The only real prediction you can make is that life will go on. And that it will be interesting. — Alan Weisman

Will you walk a little faster?' said a whiting to a snail,
'There's a porpoise close behind us and he's treading on my tail.
See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance!
They are waiting on the shingle
will you come and join the dance?
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance? — Lewis Carroll

Being on a successful show is kind of like being a sea turtle. Every year, sea turtles lay hundreds and hundreds of eggs, but only a few manage to survive and mature. It's the same with TV pilots. There are so many great ideas, but for whatever reason only the lucky ones get picked up. — Keiko Agena

Nothing is more important than saving ... the Lions, Tigers, Giraffes, Elephants, Froggies, Turtles, Apes, Raccoons, Beetles, Ants, Sharks, Bears, and, of course, the Squirrels. The humans? The planet does not need humans. — James Lee

Video games don't make people go nuts. I played Super Mario forever. Not once hopping on a turtle or smash my head through a brick ceiling. — Dane Cook

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

Men are like turtles; they are classified and valued according to their shells. In — Jose Rizal

You want to talk? Fine. Talk. Tell me something you've never told anybody else.'
I thought for a moment. 'Turtles have the second-largest brains of any animal on the planet.'
It took Isabel only a second to process this. 'No, they don't.'
'I know that's why I've never told anybody that before. — Maggie Stiefvater

Liv."
I looked at him.
"Don't hide," North said.
"I'm not."
"You remember I told you once you were like a turtle?" North asked.
"Yes."
"I don't think turtles have very interesting lives."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It's okay to have a hard shell," North said. "Not okay to hide in it when you're so young. — Nina Lane

Like the turtle, you need to stick your neck out to make progress. — Anna Olson

Wise men say, 'Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza. — Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

bananaland, where the jungle had been leveled and replaced by endless acres of banana trees, each displaying bunches of bananas enclosed in bright blue plastic bags. The bags would be filled with insecticide and chemicals deemed essential to marketing bananas where winter was cold and people liked their fruit in uniform: industrial agriculture gone tropical. Later, after the harvest, many of the bags ended up in the Caribbean, where they would be mistaken for jellyfish and eaten by turtles that would then choke to death. Unlike the complex ecosystems of the rainforest and jungle, mono-crop plantings like bananas couldn't hold the ground; when the hard rains fell - it — J.J. Henderson

Turtles hate heights. They don't even like being a few feet off the ground. It's the main reason they have resisted evolution for so long-fear of heights. Turtle thinking goes thus: Sure, first our scales turn into feathers and the next thing you know we're flying and chirping and perching on trees. We've seen it happen. Thanks, but we're staying right here in the mud where we belong. You're not going to see us flying full-tilt boogie into a sliding glass door. — Christopher Moore

One-Eye scowled at Goblin. "Keep it up, Barf Bag. You'll be grocery shopping with the turtles." What the hell did that mean? Some kind of obscure shop talk? But Goblin was as croggled as the rest of us. Grinning, One-Eye resumed gabbling with his relatives. — Glen Cook

All the thoughts of a turtle are turtle — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The turtle only makes progress when it's neck is stuck out. — Rollo May

A turtle without a shell is a very strange thing. Even with shells, turtles are very strange things, with their miniature elephant's feet, parrot's beak and ludicrous tail.
-pg 30 — Albert Sanchez Pinol

When I first heard of it, I thought it was a horror film. 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' is such a strange name. I wasn't into the comic books at all. — Judith Hoag

The two are unrelated. I'm not into turtles or space stuff. — Harry Connick Jr.

At first, you fall in love. You wake in the morning woozy and your twilight is lit with astral violet light. You spelunk down into each other until you come to possess some inner vision of each other that becomes one thing. Us. Together. And time passes. Like the forming of Earth itself, volcanoes rise and spew lava. Oceans appear. Rock plates shift. Sea turtles swim half the ocean to lay eggs on the mother island; songbirds migrate over continents for berries from a tree. You evolve
cosmically and geologically. You lose each other and find each other again. Every day. Until love gathers the turtles and the birds of your world and encompasses them, too. — Michael Paterniti

But we are mostly what we are, and the turtle stretching toward delicious buds on high does not lighten his carapace by his resolve. — Arthur Miller

My favorite superheroes when I was younger were the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and they still are. Simply because they rule and you've got 4 different personalities to choose from depending on your mood ... And they're huge human-turtles!! — Jason Reeves

Growing up, I had a very vivid imagination and Leonardo was like my best imaginary friend that I spoke to. When things were tough, or I was scared in an unsafe environment, I always imagined that the Ninja Turtles would come to the rescue. — Ruby Rose

We are not at the bargaining table in agreement to end abuse to our world. We are on the battlefield deciding everyday if we will let this world die or live, by how we contribute to its treatment. — Shannon L. Alder

He kept his eyes on the road as he drove slowly toward the inn. Slowly, as in a-herd-of-turtles-stampeding-through-peanut-butter slowly. The guy didn't pass a single indent in the road that didn't require a nearly complete stop. — Jill Shalvis

Alone in her shelter, she allowed herself tears. When her shelter cooled to the touch she called to Gull, "Coming out!" She eased her head out into the smoky air, looked over at Gull. She imaged they both looked like a couple of sweaty, parboiled turtles climbing out of their shells.
"Hello, gorgeous."
She laughed. It hurt her throat, but she laughed. "Hey, handsome. — Nora Roberts

Kunlun Mountain Over the earth the greenblue monster Kunlun who has seen all spring color and passion of men. Three million dragons of white jade soar and freeze the whole sky with snow. When a summer sun heats the globe rivers flood and men turn into fish and turtles. Who can judge a thousand years of accomplishments or failures? — Mao Zedong

Sir Terry Pratchett - he was knighted in 2009, and on him it looked earned rather than entitled - wrote about dragons, wizards, turtles, witches, time-travelling monks, and suitcases with legs. — Nick Harkaway

Animists thought that humans were just one of many creatures inhabiting the world. Polytheists, on the other hand, increasingly saw the world as a reflection of the relationship between gods and humans. Our prayers, our sacrifices, our sins and our good deeds determined the fate of the entire ecosystem. A terrible flood might wipe out billions of ants, grasshoppers, turtles, antelopes, giraffes and elephants, just because a few stupid Sapiens made the gods angry. Polytheism thereby exalted not only the status of the gods, but also that of humankind. — Yuval Noah Harari

Turtle has just one plan at a time, and every cell buys into it. — Ted Kooser

A leech who, having penetrated the shell of a turtle only to find that the creature has long been dead, deems it expedient to form a new attachment to a fresh turtle. — Ambrose Bierce

When this is over ... we will got to the rainforest, or a beach as white as bone. We will eat grapes from the vine, we will swim with sea turtles, we will walk miles on cobblestone streets. We will laugh and talk and confess. We will. — Jodi Picoult

But now all the natural secrets have been exposed, and it is likely that the turtles have been sold to laboratory scientists who want to remove their shells so that they can wire electrodes to the turtles' skin in order to monitor their increasing terror at the loss of their shells. — Mary Gaitskill

Hellbenders. I collected with exuberance and totality, bringing home almost everything I could get my hands on, and releasing them into the assorted outdoor terrariums or aquariums in my back yard (the turtles I let run wild in the yard, like dogs or cats). — Rick Bass

We don't even know if we're in this room. We could be in a turtle's dream in outer space. — Danny DeVito

Soups challenge us, because an enticing flavorful stew can be as different from the thin watery beverage sometimes erroneously called soup as a genuine green turtle is from the mock turtle. — Louis Pullig De Gouy

The place where the story happened was a world on the back of four elephants perched on the shell of a giant turtle. That's the advantage of space. It's big enough to hold practically anything, and so, eventually, it does.
People think that it is strange to have a turtle ten thousand miles long and an elephant more than two thousand miles tall, which just shows that the human brain is ill-adapted for thinking and was probably originally designed for cooling the blood. It believes mere size is amazing.
There's nothing amazing about size. Turtles are amazing, and elephants are quite astonishing. But the fact that there's a big turtle is far less amazing than the fact that there is a turtle anywhere. — Terry Pratchett

A morning later, Nancy described her first dream, the first remembered dream of her life. She and Judy Thorne were on a screened porch, catching ladybugs. Judy caught one with one spot on its back and showed it to Nancy. Nancy caught one with two spots and showed it to Judy. Then Judy caught one with three spots and Nancy one with four. Because (the child explained) the dots showed how old the ladybugs were. She told this dream to her mother, who had her repeat it to her father at breakfast. Piet was moved, beholding his daughter launched intoanother dimension of life. Like school. He was touched by her tiny stock of imagery the screened porch (neither they nor the Thornes had one; who?), the ladybugs (with turtles the most toylike of creatures), the mysterious power of numbers, that generates space and time. Piet saw down a long amplifying corridor of her dreams, and wanted to hear her tell them, to grow older with her, to shelter her forever." John Updike, Couples, 1968. — John Updike

Open the windows and the doors, she shouted, cook some meat and fish, buy the largest turtles around, let strangers come in and spread their mats in the corners and urinate in the rose bushes and sit down to eat as many times as they want, and belch and rant and muddy everything with their boots, and let them do whatever they want to us, because that's the only way to drive off ruin. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Only bad golfers are lucky. They're the ones bouncing balls off trees, curbs, turtles and cars. Good golfers have bad luck. When you hit the ball straight, a funny bounce is bound to be unlucky. — Lee Trevino

My son craves picture books about Transformers and Ninja Turtles and the Hulk; they show one fantastic creature smashing or zapping another into smithereens on page after page. They are dull and ugly and show no interesting stories or models of conflict resolution or character building. — Russell Smith

I've been reading titles from IDW for probably as long as they've been in existence. 'Ninja Turtles' is one of my all-time favorite properties ever. I also love, love, love 'Locke & Key.' I also love some of the things they do with pre-existing properties like 'Transformers' and 'Ghostbusters.' — Taran Killam

Perhaps swimming was dancing under the water, he thought. To swim under lily pads seeing their green slender stalks wavering as you passed, to swim under upraised logs past schools of sunfish and bluegills, to swim through reed beds past wriggling water snakes and miniature turtles, to swim in small lakes, big lakes, Lake Michigan, to swim in small farm ponds, creeks, rivers, giant rivers where one was swept along easefully by the current, to swim naked alone at night when you were nineteen and so alone you felt like you were choking every waking moment, having left home for reasons more hormonal than rational; reasons having to do with the abstraction of the future and one's questionable place in the world of the future, an absurdity not the less harsh for being so widespread. — Jim Harrison

Just like a turtle, we only make progress if we stick our neck out. — James Bryant Conant

Today a child told Santa Ken that he wanted his dead father back and a complete set of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Everyone wants those Turtles. — David Sedaris

Whales only get harpooned when they come to the surface, and turtles can only move forward when they stick their neck out, but investors face risk no matter what they do.. — Charles Jaffe

Taking care of our families isn't just about putting food on the table today. It's about ensuring that our children and grandchildren will have a habitable world where they can get to know various species of sea turtles. — Jane Velez-Mitchell

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

Swamps where cedars grow and turtles wait on logs but not for anything in particular; fields bordered by crooked fences broken by years of standing still; orchards so old they have forgotten where the farmhouse is. In the north I have eaten my lunch in pastures rank with ferns and junipers, all under fair skies with a wind blowing. — E.B. White

And the turtles, of course ... all the turtles are free, as turtles and, maybe, all creatures should be. — Dr. Seuss

I pledge allegiance to the soil
of Turtle Island,
and to the beings who thereon dwell
one ecosystem
in diversity
under the sun
With joyful interpenetratio n for all. — Gary Snyder

Gene Siskel used to describe old-age makeup as making young actors look like turtles. — Roger Ebert

Tell me something you haven't told anyone else before' 'turtles have the second biggest brain in the world' ' no they don't why did you tell me that' 'because I haven't told that to anyone else — Maggie Stiefvater

Human beings can learn valuable lessons in conservation of necessary personal resources for accomplishing the fundamental tenants of life by observing a judiciously paced turtle determinedly and stealthily traversing the world. — Kilroy J. Oldster

I'm that same David Crockett, fresh from the backwoods, half-horse, half-alligator, a little touched with the snapping turtle; can wade the Mississippi, leap the Ohio, ride upon a streak of lightning, and slip without a scratch down a honey locust [tree]. — Davy Crockett

Turtles are greater than baby nephews, because it's ok to drop a turtle. — Demetri Martin