Quotes from Patrick O'Brian

But there is nothing so tedious as sitting by when two old shipmates are calling out, "Do you remember the three days' blow in the Mona Passage? – Do you remember Wilkins and his timenoguy? – What has happened to old Blodge?

Why the wild rushing delight? Why the bullocks? Far be it from me to offer an explanation ("In general those who try to explain pictures are entirely wrong," said Picasso to Juan Larrea) but I will mention a circumstance that may have some bearing on their presence: in mountain country the cattle usually stay out on the high pastures for the summer, and when the right season comes they are brought down, often with rejoicing and sometimes with wreaths of flowers about their horns.

Bless you, Jack, an inch of steel in the right place will do wonders. Man is a pitiably frail machine

I am not master of words to tell you, Jack, the value of an exceedingly remote island to a naturalist, an uninhabited fertile volcanic island covered with a luxuriant vegetation, with no vile rats, dogs, cats, goats, swine, introduced by fools to destroy an Eden, an island untouched...

Stephen had no great love of the English government in its dealing with Ireland; in fact he had actively conspired against it. But he was deeply attached to individual English men and women, and in any case he did not like anyone to abuse the country but himself.

What is a potto? It is a little furry creature that sleeps all day with its head between its legs and then walks about very, very slowly all night, high in the trees, slowly eating leaves and creeping up on birds as they roost and eating them too.

it was illustrated in the traditional Spanish and Catalan way, as an aleluya or an auca, with a series of little pictures, each self-contained but all connected.

They were poor thin little undernourished creatures with only a few blue teeth among them, though young: they had been taken up for combining with others to ask for higher wages and sentenced to transportation; but as they were somewhat less criminal than those who had actually made the demand they were allowed to join the Navy instead.

It is unjust to provoke a man and then to complain he is a satyr if the provocation succeeds. You

It was quite unlike their friendly discourse of some days before, and presently Stephen grew sadly bored: lies or half-lies, he reflected, had a certain value in that they gave a picture of what the man would wish to seem; but a very few were enough for that. And then they had a striving, aggressive quality, as though the listener had to be bludgeoned into admiration; they were the antithesis of conversation.

I remember the fact of extreme, prostrating terror,' he said ... but the inward nature of the emotion now escapes me.

you cannot expect old heads on young shoulders;

Sometimes it is used to mean the mere copying of a mannerism, direct theft, and sometimes it hovers ambiguously over a wide area; but there is a strong case for the assertion that no man can be influenced—influenced to the degree of producing a valid work of art and not a mere pastiche—by anything that is not at least latent in his mind.

Stephen that he had not spent a pleasant forenoon with the admiral; and all he said, as he changed into his shoes, was, 'You do not need a head, nor even a heart, to be all a female can require.

The operation, performed on an immensely obese, timid patient, was far more intricate than they had expected; yet finally it was done, and not only was it successful in itself, but there was a real likelihood that the man might live.

The twenty years have nearly passed, and soon perhaps the voice of authority, speaking through Le Corbusier, will be heard: but so far the UNESCO picture is not looked upon as one of Picasso's successes.

Van Dongen was still there, with his Dutch wife and their little daughter, for whom Picasso made a sinister doll out of a black stocking; but van Dongen's days of extreme poverty, his diet of spinach alone, were almost at an end, for he had painted a fine erotic nude of Fernande (though its origin was never acknowledged)

none of the peevishness and ill-nature so usual in the elderly.

Quick's the word and sharp's the action.

Dr Maturin is admirably strict,' said Jack. 'He often desires me to have the men flogged, to overcome their torpor and to open their veins both at the same time. A hundred lashes at the gangway is worth a stone of brimstone and treacle, we always say.

Now, Polychrests,' he said, 'now we are going to crack on until she groans again. Stuns'ls aloft and alow, royals, and, damn me, royal stuns'ls and skys'ls if she'll bear 'em. The sooner we're there, the sooner we're home. Topmen, upperyardmen, are you ready?' 'Ready, aye ready, sir.' A comfortable, good body of sound – relief, thankfulness? 'Then at the word, up you go. Lay aloft!

The Captain Has An Uncommon Genteel Figgar

the lower classes naturally looked up to gentlemen and loved them, in their humble way; only gentlemen were fit to be officers.

and in less time than he had ever known a woman take to dress she was back in a travelling habit and a broad-brimmed veiled hat.