Top 35 C. S. Forester Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Novel writing wrecks homes.”

— C. S. Forester

2. “The lucky man is he who knows how much to leave to chance.”

— C. S. Forester

3. “When a man who is drinking neat gin starts talking about his mother he is past all argument.”

— C. S. Forester

4. “I must be like the princess who felt the pea through seven mattresses; each book is a pea.”

— C. S. Forester

5. “A man who writes for a living does not have to go anywhere in particular, and he could rarely afford to if he wanted.”

— C. S. Forester

6. “The stinks of the true believers have to be smelt to be believed.”

— C. S. Forester

7. “Order, counter order, disorder”; at more than one lecture at Annapolis he had heard that quotation, and during twenty years of service he had seen its truth demonstrated scores of times.”

— C. S. Forester

8. “I thank God daily for the good fortune of my birth, for I am certain I would have made a miserable peasant.”

— C. S. Forester

9. “I’d rather be in trouble for having done something than for not having done anything.”

— C. S. Forester

10. “They were setting off on an adventure, and Hornblower was only too conscious that it was his own fault.”

— C. S. Forester

11. “The work is with me when I wake up in the morning; it is with me while I eat my breakfast in bed and run through the newspaper, while I shave and bathe and dress.”

— C. S. Forester

12. “When I die there may be a paragraph or two in the newspapers. My name will linger in the British Museum Reading Room catalogue for a space at the head of a long list of books for which no one will ever ask.”

— C. S. Forester

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13. “A whim, a passing mood, readily induces the novelist to move hearth and home elsewhere. He can always plead work as an excuse to get him out of the clutches of bothersome hosts.”

— C. S. Forester

14. “Perhaps that suspicion of fraud enhances the flavor.”

— C. S. Forester

15. “Novel writing is far and away the most exhausting work I know.”

— C. S. Forester

16. “Bush could never understand Hornblower’s disciplinary methods. He had been positively horrified when he had heard his captain’s public admission that he too had baths under the washdeck pump – it seemed madness for a captain to allow his men to guess that they were of the same flesh as his.”

— C. S. Forester

17. “Though there are very serious disadvantages about being a true believer. Who would want four wives at any time, especially when one pays for the doubtful privilege by abstaining from wine?”

— C. S. Forester

18. “I formed a resolution to never write a word I did not want to write; to think only of my own tastes and ideals, without a thought of those of editors or publishers.”

— C. S. Forester

19. “July 4th, 1776,” mused Keene, reading Hornblower’s date of birth to himself.”

— C. S. Forester

20. “There is no other way of writing a novel than to begin at the beginning at to continue to the end.”

— C. S. Forester

21. “Everything was in stark and dreadful contrast with the trivial crises and counterfeit emotions of Hollywood, and I returned to England deeply moved and emotionally worn out.”

— C. S. Forester

22. “I have heard of novels started in the middle, at the end, written in patches to be joined together later, but I have never felt the slightest desire to do this.”

— C. S. Forester

23. “Harm began to come to Hornblower from that day forth, despite his obedience to orders and diligent study of his duties, and it stemmed from the arrival in the midshipmen’s berth of John Simpson as senior warrant officer.”

— C. S. Forester

24. “His officers saw little of him, and did not love what they saw.”

— C. S. Forester

25. “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me, especially when I do not understand them.”

— C. S. Forester

26. “He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.”

— C. S. Forester

27. “Plain cowardice was far rarer than idiocy, just as plain courage was more common than nerve.”

— C. S. Forester

28. “I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee.”

— C. S. Forester

29. “The most important objective was to drive the sub away from the convoy. To destroy the sub was an important objective but not the only one.”

— C. S. Forester

30. “In an age of hard drinking Hornblower stood almost alone in his abstemiousness, from no conscientious motive but solely because he actively disliked the feeling of not having complete control of his judgment.”

— C. S. Forester

31. “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.”

— C. S. Forester

32. “It was quite disgraceful that he had allowed sleep to creep up on him unawares. He had never had the experience before in his life. It was only thirty hours since he had been awakened in readiness for yesterday’s general quarters after two hours of perfectly sound sleep.”

— C. S. Forester

33. “Krause found himself swaying on his feet again. This was quite absurd; he had been awake for less than forty-eight hours, and he had had two or even three hours of good sleep the night before last.”

— C. S. Forester

34. “The British officer who had lectured on antisubmarine warfare at Casco Bay had been fond of quoting an army story of the previous war in which two infantry privates put their clothes through a newly invented machine for delousing them. “Why,” said one, bitterly, after inspecting results, “they’re all alive still.” “Yes,” said the other, “but I expect they’ve had a hell of a fright.”

— C. S. Forester

35. “With two years of high school to his credit the boy had at least the educational requirements for his station. And only experience would tell if he had the others; if he would stand at his post amid dead and wounded, amid fire and destruction, and still pass on orders without tripping over a word.”

— C. S. Forester

36. “Krause knew academically that a human touch was desirable in these relationships even though he himself had never felt the need of it. He would be perfectly content to do and die in reply to a badly worded order from a superior and would feel no resentment at the absence of a polite phrase.”

— C. S. Forester

37. “It would never do for the captain to be lounging on his stool in the pilothouse while someone else buried the ship’s dead. The profoundest respect must be paid to the poor relics of the men who had given their lives for their country.”

— C. S. Forester