Quotes from Patrick O'Brian

womanly insistence upon authority and beating once he was thoroughly drunk? I would wager that he is very nearly impotent: that would account for the woman's restless garrulity, her desire for predominance, absurdly combined with those girlish ways, and her thinning hair – she will be bald in a year or so.' 'It might be just as well if everybody were impotent,' said Jack sombrely. 'It would save a world of trouble.

aboard ship, and then hard tack, salt-horse

Think of the fellow in that play that calls out "My kingdom for a horse" – it would not have been poetry at all, had he said sheep.

Compulsion is the death of friendship.

A freewheeling mind can conceive a virtually infinite number of sequences, but just how that mind picks out and stores those that may perhaps be used later to deal with a given tension, a given situation, is far beyond my understanding.

Wit is the unexpected copulation of ideas.

Jack, you've debauched my sloth.

I sew his ears on from time to time, sure.

Other people's marriages are a perpetual source of amazement.

I am opposed to authority, that egg of misery and oppression; I am opposed to it largely for what it does to those who exercise it.

This short watch that is about to come, or rather these two short watches--why are they called dog watches? Where, heu, heu, is the canine connection?' Why,' said Stephen, 'it is because they are curtailed of course.

Sir,' said Stephen, 'I read novels with the utmost pertinacity. I look upon them--I look upon good novels--as a very valuable part of literature, conveying more exact and finely-distinguished knowledge of the human heart and mind than almost any other, with greater breadth and depth and fewer constraints.

They will not be pleased. But they know we must catch the monsoon with a well-found ship; and they know they are in the Navy--they have chosen their cake, and must lie on it.' You mean, they cannot have their bed and eat it.' No, no, it is not quite that either. I mean--I wish you would not confuse my mind, Stephen.

looking angrily at the wombat: and a moment later, 'Come now, Stephen, this is coming it pretty high: your brute is eating my hat.' 'So he is, too,' said Dr. Maturin. 'But do not be perturbed, Jack; it will do him no harm, at all. His digestive processes--

Stephen had spared no expense in making himself more unhappy, his own position as a rejected lover clearer.

Why there you are, Stephen,' cried Jack. 'You are come home, I find.' That is true,' said Stephen with an affectionate look: he prized statements of this kind in Jack.

My dear creature, I have done with all debate. 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.

Go and see whether the Doctor is about,' said Jack, 'and if he is, ask him to look in, when he has a moment.' Which he is in the fish-market, turning over some old-fashioned lobsters. No. I tell a lie. That is him, falling down the companion-way and cursing in foreign.

Wallis,' said Maturin, 'I am happy to see you. How is your penis?

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.

For a moment Jack felt the strongest inclination to snatch up his little gilt chair and beat the white-faced man down with it...

I am in favour of leaving people alone, however imperfect their polity may seem. It appears to me that you must not tell other nations how to set their house in order; nor must you compel them to be happy.

No man born of woman has ever understood spoken Portuguese.

Do you not find it happens very often, that you are as gay as Garrick at dinner and then by supper-time you wonder why God made the world?