Quotes from Patrick O'Brian

Braque was right in saying, "The only thing that matters about a painting is what cannot be explained." Assertions that the picture is moving accomplish nothing, and the only hope of conveying some ghost of the feeling lies in description.

Nothing, as Milton observes, profits a man like proper self-esteem:

Like most sailors, he is widely ignorant outside his own profession; he has indeed read a certain amount, more than most of his kind, but late reading, useless as a foundation; he is convinced that no one else has ever done so, and he is a fountain of gratuitous instruction. A want of modesty: a fine fund of self-complacence.

Matisse said, "A work of art must, both for the businessman and for the artist, be a mental tranquilizer, something in the nature of an armchair that gives him ease and comfort after bodily fatigue.

On and on she sailed, in warmer seas but void, as though they alone had survived Deucalion's flood; as though all land had vanished from the earth; and once again the ship's routine dislocated time and temporal reality so that this progress was an endless dream, even a circular dream, contained within an unbroken horizon and punctuated only by the sound of guns thundering daily in preparation for an enemy whose real existence it was impossible to conceive.

She is remarkably dry,' he said to Stephen who, preferring to die in the open, had crept up on deck

But you know as well as I, patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile.

schools of fishes, crossing and recrossing, all

He was conscientious, he did his duty as he understood it; but he was no seaman.

Horta de Sant Joan

expressed myself badly. What I meant was that if he could induce others to believe what he said, then for him the statement acquired some degree of truth, a reflection of their belief that it was true; and this reflected truth might grow stronger with time and repetition until it became conviction, indistinguishable from ordinary factual truth, or very nearly so.

Surely man in general is born to be oppressed or solitary, if he is to be fully human;

It is a wound, if you wish,' said Stephen. 'But not from our battle with the Cacafuego. Some lady of your acquaintance has been too liberal with her favours, too universally kind.

I mean to digest my buzzard in my cot. - Stephen Maturin

Let us live whilst we are alive.

nunc et in hora mortis nostrae

Perhaps I am no great judge of what is honourable, sir,' said Dillon. 'I speak as a mere fighting man.

But injustice is a rule of the service, as you know very well; and since you have to have a good deal of undeserved abuse, you might just as well have it from your friends.

He and his officers stood rigidly with their hats off, and as soon as the last roar had died away over the harbour, echoing back and forth, he called out, 'Three cheers for the Amelia!' and the Sophies, though deep in the working of the sloop, responded like heroes, scarlet with pleasure and the energy needed for huzzaying proper – huge energy, for they knew what was manners.

The grief and anxiety did not die away, but of necessity they receded.

plenty of men never rose even to commander; and the commanders were a very respectable body of men. But could a man be entrusted with a line of battle ship if he were liable to take it into his head to fight a fleet engagement according to his own notions of strategy? No, there was not the least likelihood, unless something very extraordinary took place. Captain Aubrey's record was by no means all that could be wished. Lord

My point is that the admirable men of those times, the Cochranes, Byrons, Falconers, Seymours, Boscawens and the many less famous sailors from whom I have in some degree compounded my characters, are best celebrated in their own splendid actions rather than in imaginary contests; that authenticity is a jewel; and that the echo of their words has an abiding value.

Vade retro, Satanas!

as it is not tyranny. All I ask is an independent parliament