Quotes from Patrick O'Brian

I read novels with the utmost pertinaity. 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 beadth and depth and fewer contraints.

I slept as the person in Plutarch that ran from Marathon to Athens without a pause would have slept if he had not fallen dead, the creature.

The sea has receded!' cried Stephen. 'I am amazed.' 'They tell me it does so twice a day in these parts,' said Jack. 'It is technically known as the tide.

How wonderfully strange,' he thought, 'to be upset by this trifle; yet I am upset.

Stephen came on deck reflecting with satisfaction upon his sloth, now a parlour-boarder with the Irish Franciscans at Rio, and a secret drinker of the altar-wine.

Another roll like that, and we shall have no masts,' said Pullings, as the remaining crockery, the glasses and the inhabitants of the gun-room all shot over to the lee. 'We'll lose the mizen first, Doctor,' - picking Stephen tenderly out of the wreckage - 'and so we'll be a brig; then we'll lose the foremast, so we'll be a right little old sloop; then we'll lose the main, and we'll be a raft, which is what we ought to have begun as.

Let us drink to the renewed success of Irish arms, and confusion to the Pope.

Are you very much attached to money?' asked Stephen. 'I love it passionately,' said Jack, with truth ringing clear in his voice. 'I have always been poor, and I long to be rich.

I wonder, James, whether it is not too easy for a rich man to despise money

I should send my bees ashore for you, upon my sacred honour.

Wondering just how Mr Church thought he had deserved anything short of impalement, Stephen walked into the cabin.

I am so happy that you saw your epop.

It all gave a pleasant illusion of eternity, this quiet sailing under a perfect sky towards a horizon perpetually five miles ahead, never nearer.

Good only for destruction - has destroyed all that was valuable in the monarchy - is destroying France with daemonic energy - this tawdry, theatrical empire - a deeply vulgar man - nothing French about him - insane ambition - the whole world one squalid tyranny. His infamous treatment of the Pope!

The back of my hand to guilt.

But, however, I clapped a stopper over his capers.' Dr Maturin was proud of his nautical expressions: sometimes he got them right, but right or wrong he always brought them out with a slight emphasis of satisfaction, much as others might utter a particularly apt Greek or Latin quotation. 'And brought him up with a round stern,' he added.

I will tell you a thing about women. They are superior to men in this, that they have an unfeigned, objective, candid admiration for good looks in other women – a real pleasure in their beauty. Yours

Compulsion is the death of friendship, joy.

My dear Miss Lamb,' he cried, taking her free hand, 'I hope I see you well. Quite well?' he said earnestly, meaning 'not too much raped?

I say these damned things,' Jack went on, musing as they drank their bottle, 'and don't quite understand at the time, though I see people looking black as hell, and frowning, and my friends going "Pst, pst", and then I say to myself, "You're brought by the lee again, Jack.

Oh, the odious wench. How I wish I were rid of her. I have always loathed women, from clew to earring; hook, line and sinker; root and branch. I always said this would happen, you remember; I was against it from the start. Damn it for a flibbertigibbet, the hussy.

If she is still there in the morning – if she has not run into the lee of Norfolk Island – and if there is no extraordinary change in the weather, I shall have to heave to. To stop,' he added, for a person who could call a cutter a ship after so many years at sea might need even simpler terms explained.

You will not be afraid of all those rough men?' asked Sophie, when Clarissa came down. 'No. As far as I have seen, apart from mere brute strength they are no more formidable than we are. Less so, indeed, since most have that dog-does-not-bite-bitch rule deeply engrained, while nothing of that kind applies to us.

It's all along of the unicorn's horn – it's all along of the glorious hand. Huzzay, three times huzzay for the doctor!' Lord, how they cheered their surgeon! It was he who had brought the narwhal's tusk aboard: and the severed hand, the Hand of Glory, was his property: both symbolized (and practically guaranteed) immense good fortune, virility, safety from poison or any disease you chose to name: and both had proved their worth.