Patrick O'Brian Quotes
Top 100 wise famous quotes and sayings by Patrick O'Brian
Patrick O'Brian Famous Quotes & Sayings
Discover top inspirational quotes from Patrick O'Brian on Wise Famous Quotes.
I know of few men over 50 that seem to me entirely human, virtually none who has long exercised authority.
The newly-minted captain admits the irony between the gold on his shoulders and the lack of gold in his pockets.
For a moment Jack felt the strongest inclination to snatch up his little gilt chair and beat the white-faced man down with it ...
On a ship, everything is enclosed: the people are right on top of each other and can't get up and walk away.
Come all you thoughtless young men,
a warning take by me
And never leave your happy homes
to sail the raging sea.
a warning take by me
And never leave your happy homes
to sail the raging sea.
Whereas I had not meant anything so illiberal as a national reflexion, of course; only that I hated Papists.
It is a great while since I felt the grind of bone under my saw,' he added, smiling with anticipation.
Wondering just how Mr Church thought he had deserved anything short of impalement, Stephen walked into the cabin.
But when a man puts on maturity and invulnerability, it seems that he necessarily becomes indifferent to many things that gave him joy.
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.
Likings arise when one has no earthly reason for liking - the most wildly improbable marriages and uncommon friendship.
For Captain Aubrey, as for the rest of brute creation, there were only two kinds of birds, the edible and the inedible.
The lookout that first sights the cat shall have ten guineas and remission of sins, short of mutiny, sodomy, or damaging the paintwork.
If I were a woman I should march out with a flaming torch and a sword; I should emasculate right and left.
There is a systematic flocci-nauci-nihili-pilification of all other aspects of existence that angers me.
Diana accepted the bait, spat out the hook with contempt, and hurried away to the stables to consult with Thomas,
I have often observed that extremely violent noise and activity go with good-fellowship and heightened spirits.
But it did not much care for hunting, and then like so many geldings it spent much of its time mourning for its lost stones: a discontented horse.
Killick was a cross-grained bastard, who supposed that if he sprinkled his discourse with a good many sirs, the words in between did not signify:
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.
Stephen had spared no expense in making himself more unhappy, his own position as a rejected lover clearer.
The function of the novel is the exploration of the human condition. Really, that's what it's all about.
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?
It all gave a pleasant illusion of eternity, this quiet sailing under a perfect sky towards a horizon perpetually five miles ahead, never nearer.
Puddings, my dear sir?' cried Graham.
Puddings. We trice 'em athwart the starboard gumbrils, when sailing by and large.
Puddings. We trice 'em athwart the starboard gumbrils, when sailing by and large.
For very strangely his officers looked upon Jack Aubrey as a moral figure, in spite of all proofs of the contrary ...
Should I feel better if I were to vomit?' asked Jagiello. 'I doubt it,' said Stephen. 'It has done nothing for the Colonel.
The newly-minted captain is told to let nothing stop him but to do nothing that would risk his ship or his crew.
I very much dislike being interviewed by the kind of journalist who tries to dig into your private life.
I have 60 years of reading to draw upon: naval memoirs, dispatches, the Naval Chronicles, family letters.
You can't be happy if you're not tolerably happy with yourself. The addition of friends adds immeasurably to life.
Take a newspaper account of Waterloo or Trafalgar, with all the small advertisements: it seems much more real than reading about it in a history book.
One lives in the very present moment; lives intently. There is no urge to be doing: being is the highest good.
Still, the farther hills remained as untouched as the sea; high, remote, arid, dark and sterile, poisoned with the sun.
Although wealth may not bring happiness, the immediate prospect of it provides a wonderfully close imitation.