Captain Blood Quotes
"Justice is the concern of every loyal subject, for an injustice committed by one who holds the King's commission is in some sense a dishonour to the King's majesty."
"My business, my lord, was with his wounds, not with his politics."
"The death to which you may doom me is a light pleasantry by contrast with the death to which your lordship has been doomed by that Great Judge with whose name your lordship makes so free."
"I could gladly have forgone this acquaintance with them."
"It's a curious and instructive reversal of the usual way of these things. Faith, it's an uncertain world entirely!"
"For I have this to say before you deliver judgment. Your lordship sees me — an innocent man whose only offence is that I practised charity — with a halter round my neck."
"I was never with that army. No witness has sworn to that, and I dare swear that no witness will."
"For if I am to be troubled with the say of all you traitor dogs, I may sit here until the Spring Assizes."
"But I have done with you. I see thee, villain, I see thee already with a halter round thy neck."
"Slowly, faintly, the colour crept back into that ashen face."
"On my soul, that swarthy rascal has given his lordship a scare."
"He was right in his indifferently expressed thought that a man whose mien and words could daunt such a lord of terror as Jeffreys, should by the dominance of his nature be able to fashion himself a considerable destiny."
"You are not to suppose that this command was dictated by any sense of mercy."
"Many must succumb in torment to the horrors of West Indian slavery, and so be the envy of their surviving companions."
"They beheld a town of sufficiently imposing proportions composed of houses built upon European notions of architecture."
"If some other planter had bought me, it is odds that the facts of my shining abilities might never have been brought to light."
"I am not your patient. Please to remember it in future."
"It's an achievement," he admitted. "But then, I have not fared as ill as I might."
"A prison, he reflected, was a prison, though it had neither walls nor bars, however spacious it might be."
"Daily he came to think more of his clipped wings, of his exclusion from the world, and less of the fortuitous liberty he enjoyed."
"Nevertheless he performed his doctor's duties zealously and painstakingly, if emotionlessly."
"But the price he was paying for survival was the usual price."
"Who goes slowly, goes safely, as the Italians have it."
"They must pick the best out of that score of survivors of the Monmouth men that Colonel Bishop had acquired."
"A man must sometimes laugh at himself or go mad," said he. "Few realize it. That is why there are so many madmen in the world."
"You are," he said, "the niece of the man who owns me his slave."
"By trade I am a soldier — at least, it's a trade I followed for ten years. It brought me no great gear, but it served me better than medicine, which, as you may observe, has brought me into slavery."
"You've all the night for chattering when you're out of this, and away beyond their reach."
"I hope so. It is very probable, and it doesn't matter at all," he said.
"I've done better things in my time. That's why I'm here," said Mr. Blood, whose mood seemed to be snappy.
"I shall never forget what you did, Mr. Blood. I shall never forget."
"Heroic, is it? Bedad, it's epic! Ye begin to perceive the breadth and depth of my genius."
"I am sorry to inconvenience you in this fashion, but I do not think that you have anything beyond this inconvenience to apprehend."
"Gold has at all times been considered the best of testimonies of good faith."
"I depend upon you to help me more materially."
"I regret to lose you so soon, Don Pedro. I wish that you could have made a longer visit to the Encarnacion."
"I am indeed unfortunate," said Captain Blood politely. "But I hope that we may meet again."
"The comedy was ended. Yet there was something else to follow as an epilogue, a thing that added a grim ironic flavour to the whole."
"If I am a judge," he said, "Don Diego died of fear."
"I am considering it — the profit that a man may find in the ignorance of others."
"It is not human to be wise," said Blood. "It is much more human to err, though perhaps exceptional to err on the side of mercy. We'll be exceptional."
"The love that is never to be realized will often remain a man's guiding ideal."
"If you will come to our anchorage, you shall receive at once your share of the booty of the Santiago, that you may dispose of it as you please."
"I am glad that at least you realize what you have done. And now this other filibuster has bought you, and you belong to him. You realize that, too, I hope."
"You do not take her while I live!" he cried. "Then I'll take her when you're dead," said Captain Blood.
"But mademoiselle was shrinking now, in horror. She was a girl upon the threshold of glorious womanhood, of a fine height and nobly moulded, with heavy coils of glossy black hair above and about a face that was of the colour of old ivory."
"And what about the children of the Governor of Tortuga? He must not know."
"Damn you!" Levasseur flung upon him livid with fury. "Will nothing satisfy you?"
"Ah, that, no, by example! You shall not take her..."
"I'll waive for the moment the unseemliness of making war upon the Dutch, of taking French prisoners, and of provoking the anger of the Governor of Tortuga."
"I beg you to dismiss your fears. Aboard this ship you shall be treated with all honour."
"All that I have done has been to provide the ransom necessary to bribe a gang of scoundrels to depart from obedience to the arch-scoundrel who commanded them, and so deliver you from all peril."
"I have a sort of honour — shall we say, some rags of honour? — remaining me from better days."
"Why, child, I might find it hard to forgive you the stupidity of having thought otherwise."
"I am no fool, my friends. I have eyes, me. And I see."
"Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad."
"You will find that Don Miguel is in an extremely bad temper. Commend me to him, and say that I venture to remind him that he must blame himself for all the ills that have befallen him."
"Bid him think twice before he lets his devils loose upon an English settlement again."
"Hate was now this unfortunate man's daily bread, and the hope of vengeance an obsession to his mind."
"Indeed, coincidence may be defined as the very tool used by Fate to shape the destinies of men and nations."
"It is an odd fact of human nature that a man may for years possess the knowledge that a certain thing must be of a certain fashion, and yet be shocked to discover through his own senses that the fact is in perfect harmony with his beliefs."
"Thief and pirate she had branded him. She should be justified. Thief and pirate should he prove henceforth; no more nor less; as bowelless, as remorseless, as all those others who had deserved those names."
"He laughed softly, jeeringly, as he leaned on the taffrail, looking down at the phosphorescent gleam in the ship's wake, and his own laughter startled him by its evil note."
"She had summed him up, convicted him and sentenced him in that one phrase. He was thief and pirate in her eyes; nothing more, nothing less."
"Extremes touch, and in touching may for a space become confused, indistinguishable."
"To be ungrateful may be human; but to display it is childish."
"It's a providence having her aboard; a providence."
"A man who can forgive such an enemy as Don Miguel and take up this uncompromising attitude with me isn't to be judged by ordinary rules."
"levius fit patientia quicquid corrigere est nefas."
"Faith, you explain yourself after a fashion."
"I've never found it necessary. In any case ye couldn't have supposed that I should consent to anything different."
"It's not his way to be sounding his own praises."
"Lord, Peter! Is there never to be no end to this?"
"'Sblood and 'ounds! If ye wants the wench, why the plague doesn't ye go and fetch her?"
"Ye'll leave my cabin this minute, so ye will, or, by Heaven, it's your corpse'll be carried out of it."
"I have something better than that to propose," said he.
"You are offering to take us into the French service?" he asked. "On what terms, monsieur?"
"Ah, yes, but with the risks attaching to acts of piracy."
"It is the intention of France that this war shall be carried into the New World."
"I am happy to assure you," said Captain Blood, "that the reminder is unnecessary."
"Thus harmony was restored. But it had been an unpromising beginning."
"The absurd Baron's fierce eyes positively gleamed with satisfaction."
"God's Blood! You shall answer to me for that word, though it entail a yet worse dishonour to meet you."
"We must follow," he declared. "Follow and punish."
"I'll not presume to take it in the hand of a thief and a pirate."
"I am negligent of your lordship's concerns in my consideration of my own."
"I would not have you do anything mean or dishonouring."
"I am glad that you will do that. Glad, above all, for your own sake."
"I judged too harshly where it was a presumption to judge at all."
"I am going, Captain Blood. Since you are so generous to my uncle, I shall be returning to Barbados with him."
"There was never, never anybody but you, Peter."
"You will be merciful with him. You will spare him all you can for my sake, Peter."