Top 120 Patrick O'Brian Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “Smell is of all senses by far the most evocative: perhaps because we have no vocabulary for it – nothing but a few poverty-stricken approximations to describe the whole vast complexity of odour – and therefore the scent, unnamed and unnamable, remains pure of association; it cannot be called upon again and again, and blunted, by the use of a word; and so it strikes afresh every time, bringing with it all the circumstances of its first perception. This.”

— Patrick O'Brian

52. “Put those pistols down at once,’ he said coldly. ‘Do not you know it is very rude to point a pistol at a person you do not mean to kill? For shame, Villiers. Where were you brought up?”

— Patrick O'Brian

53. “Ah,′ said Loder, meaning by this that he regretted the turtle and the geese, that he thought Fox’s refusal for his colleagues an abuse of authority, and that he for one dissociated himself from the barbarous incivility: a considerable burden for a single ‘ah’, but one that it bore easily.”

— Patrick O'Brian

54. “I would not cross this room to reform parliament or prevent the union or to bring about the millennium... – but man as part of a movement or a crowd is... inhuman... the only feelings I have are for men as individuals; my loyalties, such as they may be, are to private persons alone... Patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile.”

— Patrick O'Brian

55. “Injustice is a rule of the service, as you know very well; and since you have to have a good deal of undeserved abuse, you might just as well have it from your friends.”

— Patrick O'Brian

56. “Well, I will wear the bees, like Damon and Pythagoras – ho, a mere sixty thousand bees in the cabin don’t signify, much.”

— Patrick O'Brian

57. “I’ve come down from the mountains, with an ass-full of specimens...”

— Patrick O'Brian

58. “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.”

— Patrick O'Brian

59. “Wondering just how Mr Church thought he had deserved anything short of impalement, Stephen walked into the cabin.”

— Patrick O'Brian

60. “Man is a deeply illogical being, and must be ruled illogically. Whatever that frigid prig Bentham may say, there are innumerable motives that have nothing to do with utility.”

— Patrick O'Brian

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

— Patrick O'Brian

62. “Christ’s blood in heaven, you ignorant, incompetent whey-faced nestlecock, do you think I am a hired spy, an informer? That I have a master, a paymaster, for God’s love? You silly little man.”

— Patrick O'Brian

63. “I say these damned things,’ Jack went on, musing as they drank their bottle, ‘and don’t quite understand at the time, though I see people looking black as hell, and frowning, and my friends going “Pst, pst”, and then I say to myself, “You’re brought by the lee again, Jack.”

— Patrick O'Brian

64. “He was smiling openly when Stephen walked in, looking shrewish. Like many large, florid, good-natured men, Jack Aubrey was afflicted with an undue proportion of small pale, meagre friends of a shrewish turn.”

— Patrick O'Brian

65. “They played, not beautifully but deep, ignoring their often discordant strings and striking right into the heart of the music they knew best, the true notes acting as their milestones. On the poop above their heads, where the weary helmsmen tended the new steering-oar and Babbington stood at the con, the men listened intently; it was the first sound of human life that they had heard, apart from the brief Christmas merriment, for a time they could scarcely measure.”

— Patrick O'Brian

66. “Are you very much attached to money?’ asked Stephen. ‘I love it passionately,’ said Jack, with truth ringing clear in his voice. ‘I have always been poor, and I long to be rich.”

— Patrick O'Brian

67. “The words ‘Very finely played, sir, I believe’ were formed in his gullet if not in his mouth when he caught the cold and indeed inimical look and heard the whisper, ‘If you really must beat the measure, sir, let me entreat you to do so in time, and not half a beat ahead.”

— Patrick O'Brian

68. “There is a proverb in Ireland,’ said Stephen, ‘to the effect that there is good to be found even in an Englishman – is minic Gall maith. It is not often used, however.”

— Patrick O'Brian

69. “If I were a woman I should march out with a flaming torch and a sword; I should emasculate right and left.”

— Patrick O'Brian

70. “Perhaps there will be news from home waiting for us there. Lord, how I should love to know how things are going.’ ‘Oh so should I,’ cried Stephen. ‘Though it is not yet possible that there should be word of Diana and our daughter. Sometimes when I think of that little soul I grow quite lachrymose.’ ‘A few months of roaring and bawling and swaddling-clothes will soon cure you of that. You have to be a woman to bear babies.’ ‘So I have always understood,’ said Stephen.”

— Patrick O'Brian

71. “He has written about equality, the perfectibility of human nature, and the essential goodness of mankind for many years – he judges others by himself, poor soul.”

— Patrick O'Brian

72. “But is that not corruption, Jack? You were always very much against corruption when you were young, I mean younger.’ ‘So I am still: corruption in others is anathema to me. But you would scarcely credit the depths of turpitude I should descend to myself for a thousand a year;.”

— Patrick O'Brian

73. “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:.”

— Patrick O'Brian

74. “For you must know, gentlemen, that when the mariner is dosed, he likes to know that he has been dosed: with fifteen grains or even less of this valuable substance scenting him and the very air about him there can be no doubt of the matter; and such is the nature of the human mind that he experiences a far greater real benefit than the drug itself would provide, were it deprived of its stench.”

— Patrick O'Brian

75. “I should send my bees ashore for you, upon my sacred honour.”

— Patrick O'Brian

76. “Stephen had spared no expense in making himself more unhappy, his own position as a rejected lover clearer.”

— Patrick O'Brian

77. “I read novels with the utmost pertinaity. I look upon them – I look upon good novels – as a very valuable part of literature, conveying more exact and finely-distinguished knowledge of the human heart and mind than almost any other, with greater beadth and depth and fewer contraints.”

— Patrick O'Brian

78. “Stephen came on deck reflecting with satisfaction upon his sloth, now a parlour-boarder with the Irish Franciscans at Rio, and a secret drinker of the altar-wine.”

— Patrick O'Brian

79. “It all gave a pleasant illusion of eternity, this quiet sailing under a perfect sky towards a horizon perpetually five miles ahead, never nearer.”

— Patrick O'Brian

80. “Of course I do know it is the French who are so wicked; but there are all these people who keep coming and going – the Austrians, the Spaniards, the Russians. Pray, are the Russians good now? It would be very shocking – treason no doubt – to put the wrong people in my prayers.”

— Patrick O'Brian

81. “Where there was no equality there was no companionship: when a man was obliged to say ‘Yes, sir,’ his agreement was of no worth even if it happened to be true.”

— Patrick O'Brian

82. “The lookout that first sights the cat shall have ten guineas and remission of sins, short of mutiny, sodomy, or damaging the paintwork.”

— Patrick O'Brian

83. “The event caused a certain amount of ribaldry and a fair number of sentences depriving men of their grog for playing the God-damned fool, an offense that came under Article Thirty-six ‘All other crimes not capital, committed by any person or persons in the fleet, which are not mentioned in this act, or for which no punishment is hereby directed to be inflicted, shall be punished according to the laws and customs in such cases used at sea,’ also known as the captain’s cloak or cover-all.”

— Patrick O'Brian

84. “All your sea-omens are of disaster; and of course, with man in his present unhappy state, huddled together in numbers far too great and spending all his surplus time and treasure beating out his brother’s brains, any gloomy foreboding is likely to be fulfilled; but your corpse, your parson, your St Elmo’s fire is not the cause of the tragedy.”

— Patrick O'Brian

85. “One of the miseries of medical life is that on the one hand you know what shocking things can happen to the human body and on the other you know how very little we can really do about most of them.”

— Patrick O'Brian

86. “Tell me, sir, do you know of any banker that really understands his business? Some modern Fugger?′ ‘Oh, Stephen, if you please,’ cried Jack.”

— Patrick O'Brian

87. “The more a victory cost, the more it was esteemed.”

— Patrick O'Brian

88. “Virtue should always be colmingled with humor.”

— Patrick O'Brian

89. “Good day to you, ma’am,’ said Stephen, opening Mrs Wogan’s door. ‘I believe you may take some air at last. The sky is clear, the sun shines bright with a surprising warmth, and although our poop is now the scene of strange activity, the gangway remains, the windward, or weather gangway, ma’am. And we had best profit by the morning while it lasts.”

— Patrick O'Brian

90. “What was independence but a word? What did any form of government matter? Freedom: to do what?”

— Patrick O'Brian

91. “How wonderfully strange,′ he thought, ’to be upset by this trifle; yet I am upset.”

— Patrick O'Brian

92. “He considered old age and its mutilations and wondered what it would do for him: examples presented themselves to his mind, not only of mental decay, physical weakness, gout, stone and rheumatism, but of boastful mendacious garrulity, intense and peevish selfishness; timidity if not cowardice, dirt, concupiscence, avarice.”

— Patrick O'Brian

93. “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.”

— Patrick O'Brian

94. “Another roll like that, and we shall have no masts,′ said Pullings, as the remaining crockery, the glasses and the inhabitants of the gun-room all shot over to the lee. ‘We’ll lose the mizen first, Doctor,’ – picking Stephen tenderly out of the wreckage – ’and so we’ll be a brig; then we’ll lose the foremast, so we’ll be a right little old sloop; then we’ll lose the main, and we’ll be a raft, which is what we ought to have begun as.”

— Patrick O'Brian

95. “We must phrase it with great care, pointing out most respectfully that we will be damned if we receive him on board rather than one of the two other gentlemen we have put in for.”

— Patrick O'Brian

96. “At that time I attached a perhaps undue importance to staying alive, and I became moderately proficient with both the pistol and the small-sword.”

— Patrick O'Brian

97. “It is a great while since I felt the grind of bone under my saw,′ he added, smiling with anticipation.”

— Patrick O'Brian

98. “If she is still there in the morning – if she has not run into the lee of Norfolk Island – and if there is no extraordinary change in the weather, I shall have to heave to. To stop,′ he added, for a person who could call a cutter a ship after so many years at sea might need even simpler terms explained.”

— Patrick O'Brian

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

— Patrick O'Brian

100. “God,’ he thought, ’never let me outlive my wits.”

— Patrick O'Brian