Patrick O'Brian Quotes

The weather had freshened almost to coldness, for the wind was coming more easterly, from the chilly...

[Babbington] "What did [the Doctor, Stephen] do to you, sir?"[Captain Aubrey] "Well, I am ashamed to...

You are to consider that a certain melancholy and often a certain irascibility accompany advancing a...

Sir,’ said Stephen, ‘I read novels with the utmost pertinacity. I look upon them--I look upon good n...

Stephen had spared no expense in making himself more unhappy, his own position as a rejected lover c...

Of course I do know it is the French who are so wicked; but there are all these people who keep comi...

Within himself Jack had not the slightest doubt of victory, but it would never do to let this convic...

They played, not beautifully but deep, ignoring their often discordant strings and striking right in...

Up and up they went, still a cable's length apart; but slowly, for the ape was footsore and desponde...

But the tale or narrative set in the past may have its particular time-free value; and the candid re...

A foolish German had said that man thought in words. It was totally false; a pernicious doctrine; th...

You do not mean there is danger of peace?", cried Jack.

Injustice is a rule of the service, as you know very well; and since you have to have a good deal of...

Oh, as far as unsexing is concerned, who are we to throw stones? With us any girl that cannot find a...

Compulsion is the death of friendship, joy.

A little after moonrise Stephen woke. Extreme hunger had brought on cramps in his midriff again and ...

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

Patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which ...

Stephen nodded. 'Tell me,' he said, in a low voice, some moments later. 'Were I under naval discipli...

What's wrong with (Captain) Jack Aubrey?""Everything, since he has a command and I have not.

The Navy speaks in symbols and you may suit what meaning you choose to the words.

I sew his ears on from time to time, sure.

The more a victory cost, the more it was esteemed.

How much better a man feels when he is mixed with halibut and leg of mutton and roebuck

Well, I will wear the bees, like Damon and Pythagoras – ho, a mere sixty thousand bees in the cabin ...

He had been quite unprepared for this particular blow, striking under every conceivable kind of armo...

The newly-minted captain admits the irony between the gold on his shoulders and the lack of gold in ...

The author says that when an angry impulse is not immediately expressed, it turns to melancholy.

The back of my hand to guilt.

The newly-minted captain is told to let nothing stop him but to do nothing that would risk his ship ...

Most men find [peace] entirely unlike what they had expected - like love...

There is so much ignorant prejudice against bees in a dining-room.

Valuable and ingenious he might be, thought Jack, fixing him with his glass, but false he was too, a...

Stephen had been put to sleep in his usual room, far from children and noise, away in that corner of...

Authority is a solvent of humanity: look at any husband, any father of a family, and note the absorp...

Likings arise when one has no earthly reason for liking - the most wildly improbable marriages and u...