Quotes from Patrick O'Brian

Ever since the first introduction of taxes and regulations, the French have devoted much time and energy to evading them: it is so much a part of the French way of life that even now there is an official consolation of 10 percent for those who have no possibility of concealing their exact incomes.

It may be that a man has only a given power of decision, and if he uses it all up, making vital choices every day in his studio, he has none left for everyday life.

What pleasant days they were – an English summer at its best, and English countryside at its best, enough night-rain in the hills to keep the trout-streams fine and brisk, and there were reports of a hoopoe seen three times at Chiddingfold parsonage.

I certainly shall, sir. Anything for a quiet life is my motto.' 'And yet you were in a privateer.' 'Yes, sir. I was running away from a young woman: the same as when I left the Charleston horse-leech.

I love [chess]. Apart from anything else, it is agreeable to my sentiments as a citizen of a republic, since it always ends with the discomfiture of a king.

Sometimes you receive a knock in action: it may be your death-wound or just a scratch

Should I feel better if I were to vomit?' asked Jagiello. 'I doubt it,' said Stephen. 'It has done nothing for the Colonel.

The Americans had been kind, polite, hospitable, and their sailors thorough seamen, but they had the strangest notion of coffee: a thin, thin brew - a man might drink himself into a dropsy before the stuff raised his spirits even half a degree.

Finisterre. When she was paid off, Captain Hamond had no difficulty in manning her again, for most of his people re-entered, and he even had the luxury of turning volunteers away. Jack had met him once or twice – a quiet, thoughtful, unhumorous, unimaginative man in his forties, prematurely grey, devoted to hydrography and the physics of sailing, somewhat old for a frigate-captain – and as he had met him in the

variety of other wise saws sprang to Stephen's indignant mind – words and feathers are carried off by the wind; as is the wedding, so is the cake; do not speak Arabic in the house of the Moor; pleasures pass but sorrows stay; love, grief and money cannot be concealed

You have not bought the right to a truthful answer: your truth has not bought it. Sincerity is not to be bought: it is given, if it comes at all—given or inflicted. And really, you cannot invade a man's privacy like that.

A possible explanation may be this: in addition to professional competence, cheerful resignation, an excellent liver, natural authority and a hundred other virtues, there must be the far rarer quality of resisting the effects, the dehumanising effects, of the exercise of authority. Authority is a solvent of humanity: look

He remembered his own wedding-day and the desperate feeling of being caught on a leeshore in a gale of wind, unable to claw off, tide setting hard against him, anchors coming home.

Dr. Maturin?' asked young Mowett, and stopped short, quite shocked by the pale glare of reptilian dislike. However, he delivered his message; and he was relieved to find that it was greeted with a far more human look.

almighty,' said Killick. 'Stephen, I am going to take a turn,' said Jack, withdrawing from the table in a sly undulatory motion and darting through the door with hunched shoulders. 'Why they call this a crack frigate,' he said, swilling down a glass of water in his sleeping-cabin, 'I cannot for the life of me imagine: not a drop of coffee among two hundred and sixty men.

with such vehemence as to cause a dull crepitation, followed by a shattering dart of agony.

They were climbing now, climbing the hill of hardened mud upon which the castle stood, and once they had left the lee of the dunes the flies grew less; the heat, on the other hand, was greater still. 'You are going a very disagreeable colour,' said Stephen. 'Should not you throw off that thick coat, and loosen your neckcloth? Heavy, corpulent subjects are liable to be carried off in a twinkling, if not by a frank, straightforward apoplexy, then at least by a cerebral congestion.

all that wretched schoolmastering.' 'On some it acts like a poison, making them unfit for the society of grown men.

all the others were unbeneficed clergymen: two had been ushers in schools for young gentlemen, and thought any other life preferable to that, even on shipboard;

But without sin there can be no forgiveness.

Lord Nelson's maxim 'Never mind manoeuvres: always go straight at 'em.

Queen Anne's Gift

I am heartily sorry for it, he being a most capable, obliging man, speaking all the languages of the Levant and excellent English too - might have built the Tower of Babel singlehanded.

I do not say that all lawyers are bad, but I do maintain that the general tendency is bad: standing up in a court for whichever side has paid you, affecting warmth and conviction, and doing everything you can to win the case, whatever your private opinion may be, will soon dull any fine sense of honour. The mercenary soldier is not a valued creature, but at least he risks his life, whereas these men merely risk their next fee." -Stephen Maturin, The Reverse of the Medal