The Fortune Of War Quotes
"The warm monsoon blew gently from the east, wafting HMS Leopard into the bay of Pulo Batang."
"She was abreast of the point; she came smoothly to the wind, and her single carronade began to speak."
"The wombat stared him straight in the eye, drew a length of gold lace from its mouth, and then deliberately sucked it in again."
"Captain repair to flag, if you please, sir," said the midshipman.
"I shall get used to it presently, no doubt," he said.
"The whole service knows very well that Charles Yorke, Belling, and Harry Fisher followed you from ship to ship, and that if they are commanders and post-captains now, it is thanks to you."
"For want of a forge we were unable to hang it; but fortunately an American whaler put in, that had the necessary tools."
"You may have your mids for all I care, and your first lieutenant too."
"You always was a pig-headed, obstinate fellow," said the Admiral.
"I am a mere weak monster, prattling about myself."
"In its very nature an invitation implies an option, the possibility of refusal. You can no more compel a man to be your guest in the sense, the only valid sense, of a willing commensal, a glad partaker of your fare, than you can oblige a woman to love you. A prisoner is not a guest; a raped wench is not a wife; an invitation is not an ukase."
"But mark you, brother, it is only in compliment to you. I do not give a fig for your immemorial tyranny and oppression, nor for his Czarish Majesty back there."
"Double, double, toil and trouble. Oh, you infernal set of maniacs - brute-beasts."
"The social emotions of comradeship, extreme joint endeavour, even patriotism and selfless devotion may be involved; and glory rather than a humid bed may be the aim."
"What else raises your blood, your spirits, your whole being, to the highest pitch, so that life is triumphant, or tragic, as the case may be, and so that every day is worth a year of common life?"
"But longing will not affect the countless miles of intervening sea, and I shall spend these months with my collections, happy in possessing such a wealth of time."
"I like to persuade myself - I easily persuade myself - that Diana Villiers retains a friendship, even a tenderness for me."
"They knew the nature of Warner's inclinations, for all his ceaseless, rigorous control."
"A sine, sir, is when you draw a right line from one end of an arc perpendicular upon the radius from the centre to the other end of the arc."
"There is always something in the misfortune of others that does not displease us."
"Oh for women at sea to obviate the eternal crosscatharpings, to do away with the grumlinfuttocks, and to inject a little civilization, even of an equivocal nature, even at the risk of moral deviation."
"I do not believe I have ever seen Jack so moved. If he had heard of Sophie's death he would no doubt have felt an even keener, even crueller emotion; but it would have been a personal grief, whereas this is beyond self, except in so far as he is entirely identified with the Royal Navy - it is, after all, his life."
"A personal diary, sir, is best considered as a mirror in which a man may see himself: few men, who set down their shortcomings with the utmost naked candour, would wish to have them read by others."
"Mr Evans will support me when I say that secrecy, total discretion, is one of the most important duties of our profession."
"And lastly, it is notorious that the natural philosopher is extremely jealous of his discoveries; he wishes to have the credit of first publication; and he would no more share the glory of a new-found species than a naval commander would wish to share his capture of a ship."
"The argument went straight home, and the commodore handed over the book."
"Now I know what Jack Aubrey will look like when he is sixty-five."
"A secret agent needed a prodigious memory: he also needed a diary to supply those inevitable gaps and failures."
"The wicked fleeth where no man pursueth, and the fall of a liar is as from the housetop."
"Man is a deeply illogical being, and must be ruled illogically."
"There are countless pieties without a name that find their focus in a crown."
"Apart from anything else, it is agreeable to my sentiments as a citizen of a republic, since it always ends with the discomfiture of a king."
"The whole point of war is to bring more guns to bear on your enemy than he can bring to bear on you; or to point them better. The whole point is to win: it is not a game."
"Such inveterate malignance, brother? I find it hard to credit."
"I was sure you would not mind, being an Irishman and a friend to liberty - to America."
"I always knew Northerners worshipped the dollar, but I would never have believed anyone could have made such a coil about small change."
"He that is down needs fear no fall, He that is low, no pride."
"They were almost on the wing, waiting perhaps for no more than a brisk south-wester and the ebbing tide to shift the blockading ships far enough north and east to let them slip out into the Atlantic."
"I am exceedingly concerned, Dr Maturin, that I should have left you without paying my debt."
"Certainly, ma'am," he replied to a question about believing in the Trinity. "Well, I am glad someone does," said she. "Nearly all those scoundrels at Harvard are Unitarians, and their wives are worse."
"As far as the nations went, he did not think that there was the least parallel between the United States and France. The States had an active and vocal public opinion."
"I cannot tell you how pleased I am to see you here."
"There,' said the American, stopping opposite a large, white-painted, elegant building. 'That is the house of the Whore of Babylon. Thou art neither so young nor so foolish as to enter into it: but if thou dost, friend, mind thy poke.'"
"I do not," said Stephen. "He would consider it his duty to hang you for having run from the Leopard; and the excitement, the agitation, in his enfeebled state, would be very bad for him."
"It is not so much the Englishmen that you dislike, then, but rather their Government?"
"What a fine fellow!" cried Herapath as Stephen led him down the stairs. "The very type of the sea-officer when I was young - no coldness, no pride, nothing like those army men."
"Behind his back they tapped their foreheads, and said that there were limits - this was not a lunatic asylum."
"Will I fetch you a p-o-t before they come, at all?"
"These are victualling notes,' he said. 'Compiled according to a system of my own."
"I looked upon it as a usual greeting in the language of your nation - the Huron is represented as saying Ugh to the paleface in many authors, French and English."
"I missed it now, the close-written coded book, and having stared at the fire for a while he turned full to the table."
"If I no longer love Diana,' he wrote, 'what shall I do?'"
"My God, Diana, sometimes you are as loud as a hog in a gate."
"He walked slowly down the stairs and stepped into the porter's booth to thank the Indian for his services."
"She has forgotten the distinction between what can and what cannot be said."
"But I have heard that very occasionally the mouthful just round the cork may have an ill taste, while the rest of the bottle is excellent."
"God's my life, this wine is corked. Really, Johnson, you might give your guests something they can drink."
"Lord, Stephen,' she said, returning, 'I am so sorry to have inflicted such a boring dinner-party on you."
"You would swear she was made for feeding babies: I am sure it must be her greatest delight."
"She laid her hand affectionately on his. 'My God, Maturin,' she said, pressing it, 'what a relief it is to have somebody you can really trust and rely upon.'"
"It was a poor shift, but enough for minds willing to avoid an éclat."
"The evident change was that anger and ill-humour, disappointment and frustration, had hardened her: her face was lovely, yet its expression in repose was not amiable."
"I am sure he would have been better off with a jolly, good-natured wench without a farthing; a woman that takes herself seriously, and cannot laugh -Lord, it must weigh on him."
"But for the fine work, give me a good fresh private corpse, preferably a pauper, to avoid the fat, lovingly preserved in the best spirits of wine, double-refined."
"The suspicion, vivid throughout the night and morning, strengthened exceedingly as Stephen was walking through the little town to keep his rendezvous with Johnson."
"No, he believes that he may get some information out of me; and if I do not mistake, he supposed that from a little I may be led, by various forms of pressure, to give more and then more until at last he has turned me entirely."
"Each tends to worship a being of its own creation."
"Women often expect oranges to grow on apple-trees, and men look for constancy to a purely imaginary ideal."
"How pleasant to see you," said Johnson, when Stephen was shown in.
"He was up like a cat before the coachman could stop his team, before Pontet-Canet and his men were more than a vague dark mass coming towards him."
"Oh, oh, the mourning dove / Says, where can she be? / She was my only love / But gone from me, oh gone from me."
"Lord, Philip, that must stand you in a pretty penny," said Jack, thinking of the tons of powder at eight guineas a barrel billowing away in smoke, half a hundredweight for every one of Shannon's broadsides; to say nothing of the shot.
"Yes. Last year I sold the meadows over towards the vicarage, where we used to play cricket with the parson's boys, you remember."
"They are reasonable men, they know we are so short of ships on this station there is little likelihood of recovering our prize-hands before we put in ourselves, and they want their own back as much as I do."
"They agreed no murmuring, no sullen looks, oh very far from it. They know I lose twenty times as much."
"You shall see them practising what you preached this very afternoon. Perhaps, sir, you would like to see them too, and to view the ship. I have made some changes in the gun-sights that might interest a philosophical mind."
"A pendulum," said Broke. "A heavy pendulum. When it is at zero on this scale, the deck is horizontal, and at point-blank range a gun will hit its mark even if the captain cannot see it for the smoke."
"You know how the smoke lies when there is no great breeze, and what there is stunned by a heavy cannonade."
"With a two-and-a-half-pound charge she throws as sweet a ball as ever you could wish, true at a thousand yards."
"Surely to God, Philip, you could afford her a touch of vermilion and a little gold leaf, prizes or no prizes?"
"Hopeless case: could hardly stand: did not mind his capture. But the moment he sees his brig on fire, oh what a change! Colour returns, wrath and passion, a complete cure."
"How I hope that wretched Chesapeake will come out, so that we may return to our legalized piracy."
"She is much more than that - perhaps the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, although she was so pale. Such grace! And above all, such spirit!"
"Perhaps our chances may be nearly even: not that my opinion is worth a straw."
"I brought these for you," he said, taking the other from his left-hand pocket. "And here are the little shot and powder flasks: I advise a quarter charge, no more. Picking off the rats as they appear will occupy your mind, besides diminishing the nuisance."
"By God, Maturin," cried Diana, "you could not have had a better thought."
"She is very well, I thank you," said Stephen. "Her mind is occupied with the rats - I lent her our pocket-pistols - and with the forthcoming action."
"They have said that the English have forgotten the way to fight. You will let them know today there are Englishmen in the Shannon who still know how to fight."
"Don't cheer. Go quickly to your quarters. I am sure you will do your duty..."
"Cease fire, the great guns. Maindeck boarders away."
"Look aft, Philip," said Jack in his ear. "Look aft - she's yours. I give you joy."