Quotes from Patrick O'Brian

Whereas I had not meant anything so illiberal as a national reflexion, of course; only that I hated Papists.

Sheep ain't poetical.

And think of our poor doctor, all alone among them damned trees – why, there might be owls.

It might be, too. There is a group of them somewhat to the east. No, my dear Martin: the east is to the right.' 'Surely not in the southern hemisphere?' 'We will ask Captain Aubrey. He will probably know.

but I confess that much as I love them, I could wish them both to the Devil, with their high-flown, egocentrical points of honour and their purblind spurring one another on to remarkable exploits that may very well end in unnecessary death. In their death, which is their concern: but also in mine, to say nothing of the rest of the ship's company.

Oh for women at sea to obviate the eternal crosscat-harpings,' he said to himself, 'to do away with the grumlinfuttocks, and to inject a little civilization, even of an equivocal nature, even at the risk of moral deviation.

Oh yes, they assured him, with grave, anxious faces; they were in horrid danger of foundering, broaching-to, running violently into Australia; but there was a hope, just a very slight hope, of their meeting with a mountain of ice and clambering on to it – as many as half a dozen men might be saved.

Few had much room to cast stones, but hypocrisy has never failed the English middle class in any latitude, and they flung them in plenty with delighted, shocked abandon – rocks, boulders, limited in size only by fear for their husband's advancement. Conciliating discretion had never been among Mrs Villiers's qualities, and if subjects for malignant gossip had been wanting she would have provided them by the elephant-load.

Good heavens,' cried Mr White. 'To fire great iron balls at people you have never even spoken to – barbarity is come again.

Never mind the disappointment. Salt water will wash it away. You will be amazed how unimportant it will seem in a week's time – how everything will fall into place.

God,' he thought, 'never let me outlive my wits.

The pleasant thing about fighting with the Spaniards, Mr Ellis,' said Jack, smiling at his great round eyes and solemn face, 'is not that they are shy, for they are not, but that they are never, never ready.

Come athwart my hawse and I shall ride you down, you half-baked son of an Egyptian fart,' to a wool-gathering jolly-boat; and art echoed from either shore.

the modesty and diffidence that the penniless, unemployed Standish had brought aboard were now no longer to be seen; and the assurance of a monthly income and a settled position had developed a displeasing and often didactic loquacity. He was also, of course, incompetent.

Where would conversation be, if we were not allowed to exchange our minds freely and to abuse our neighbours from time to time?' said Stephen.

The newly-minted captain admits the irony between the gold on his shoulders and the lack of gold in his pockets.

Yet whether wisdom can be any more profitably pursued than happiness is a question.

he was hungry; and he was cross with his wife, who had said in her clear ringing voice, 'I will tell you what, Maturin, if this baby of ours has anything like the discontented, bilious, liverish expression you have brought down from town, it shall be changed out of hand for something more cheerful from the Foundling Hospital.

Tell me, sir, do you know of any banker that really understands his business? Some modern Fugger?' 'Oh, Stephen, if you please,' cried Jack.

Stephen reflected for some little while on the exact degree of calculated incivility allowed in a well-bred man.

I can and do dislike him intensely when he pins my king and a rook with his lurking knight,' said Stephen

when dinner was over he suggested that they should take their coffee on to the forecastle to look at the spectacle. Killick could not actually forbid the move, but with a pinched and shrewish look he poured the guests' coffee into villainous little tin mugs: he knew what they were capable of, if entrusted with porcelain, and he was quite right - each mug was dented when it came back, and the captain of the head had to deplore a trail of dark brown drops the whole length of his snowy deck.

and in the din Stephen cried, 'I insist upon a boat – I protest… Jack took him by the elbow and propelled him with affectionate violence into the cabin. 'My dear sir,' he said, 'I am afraid you must not insist, or protest: it is mutiny, you know, and you would be obliged to be hanged.

nunc et in hora mortis nostrae,' he repeated yet again, and felt the lap of water on his foot. He looked up. The people had gone; the pyre was no more than a dark patch with the sea hissing in its embers; and he was alone. The tide was rising fast.