Patrick O'Brian Quotes

Although wealth may not bring happiness, the immediate prospect of it provides a wonderfully close imitation.

Wit is the unexpected copulation of ideas.

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

Why there you are, Stephen,' cried Jack. 'You are come home, I find.' That is true,' said Stephen with an affectionate look: he prized statements of this kind in Jack.

... it has always seemed to me that books are the supreme decorations of a room

There is a systematic flocci-nauci-nihili-pilification of all other aspects of existence that angers me.

We understood one another better before ever I opened my mouth

Compulsion is the death of friendship.

We are always the most violent against those whom we have injured.

Jack, you've debauched my sloth.

That would be locking the horse after the stable door is gone, a very foolish thing to do.

Never mind manoeuvres, always go at them.

The sensation of falling into the past is not unlike that of coming home for the holidays.

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

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

For very strangely his officers looked upon Jack Aubrey as a moral figure, in spite of all proofs of the contrary...

No man born of woman has ever understood spoken Portuguese.

Other people's marriages are a perpetual source of amazement.

After all a book can be represented as a conversation with one’s demon.

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.

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

For a moment Jack felt the strongest inclination to snatch up his little gilt chair and beat the white-faced man down with it.

I have often observed that extremely violent noise and activity go with good-fellowship and heightened spirits.

I know of few men over 50 that seem to me entirely human, virtually none who has long exercised authority.

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

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

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

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

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 or his crew.

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

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

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

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

Compulsion is the death of friendship, joy.

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

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

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