‘My heart bleeds for you. I have never yet known a man admit he was either rich or asleep: perhaps the poor man and the wakeful man have some great moral advantage.’
Master and Commander – Patrick O’Brian
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Quote of the Day
Stephen shrugged. ‘No. But you are quite mistaken, you know. I can assure you, speaking in all sober earnest, that he has no notion of it. He is not very sharp in some ways; and in his simple view of the world, paederasts are dangerous only to powder-monkeys and choir-boys, or to those epicene creatures that are to be found in Mediterranean brothels. I made a circuitous attempt at enlightening him a little, but he looked very knowing and said, “Don’t tell me about rears and vices; I have been in the Navy all my life.” ‘
‘Then surely he must be wanting a little in penetration?’
‘James, I trust there was no mens rea in that remark?’
Master and Commander – Patrick O’Brian
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‘Patriotism will not do?’
‘My dear creature, I have done with all debate. But you know as well as I, 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.’
Master and Commander – Patrick O’Brian
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‘She is remarkably dry,’ he said to Stephen who, preferring to die in the open, had crept up on deck, had been made fast to a stanchion and who now stood, mute, sodden and appalled, behind him.
‘Eh?’
‘She – is – remarkably – dry.’
Stephen frowned impatiently: this was no time for trifling.
Master and Commander – Patrick O’Brian
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‘Sir,’ came Dillon’s voice over the intervening sea, ‘you will be pleased to hear the Norwegians are all safe.’
‘What?’
‘The – Norwegians – are – all – safe.’ The two vessels came closer. ‘They hid in a secret place in the forepeak — in the forepeak,’ went on Dillon.
‘Oh, fuck their forepeak,’ muttered the quartermaster at the wheel; for the Sophie was all ears — a very religious hush.
‘Full and by!’ cried Jack angrily, as the topsails shivered under the influence of the quartermaster’s emotion. ‘Keep her full and by.’
‘Full and by it is, sir.’
‘And the master says,’ continued the distant voice, ‘could we send a surgeon aboard, because one of his men hurt his toe hurrying down the ladder.’
‘Tell the master, from me,’ cried Jack, in a voice that reached almost to Cagliari, his face purple with effort and furious indignation, ‘tell the master that he can take his man’s toe and fuck with it.’
He stumped below, £875 the poorer, and looking thoroughly sour and disagreeable.
Master and Commander – Patrick O’Brian
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‘But in any case you will never be flogged — no, no; you shall not be flogged,’ he added, gazing with pure affection, and with something like awe, at so magnificent a prodigy, at an ignorance so very far beyond anything that even his wide-ranging mind had yet conceived.
Master and Commander – Patrick O’Brian
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‘It is just the kind of thing Nelson might have done — prompt — straight at ’em.’
‘You know Lord Nelson, sir?’
‘I had the honour of serving under him at the Nile,’ said Jack, ‘and of dining in his company twice.’ His face broke into a smile at the recollection.
‘May I beg you to tell me what kind of man he is?’
‘Oh, you would take to him directly, I am sure. He is very slight — frail — I could pick him up (I mean no disrespect) with one hand. But you know he is a very great man directly. There is something in philosophy called an electrical particle, is there not? A charged atom, if you follow me. He spoke to me one each occasion. The first time it was to say, “May I trouble you for the salt, sir?” — I have always said it as close as I can to his way ever since — you may have noticed it. But the second time I was trying to make my neighbour, a soldier, understand our naval tactics — weather-gage, breaking the line, and so on — and in a pause he leant over with such a smile and said, “Never mind manoeuvres, always go at them.” I shall never forget it: never mind manoeuvres — always go at ’em. And at that same dinner he was telling us all how someone had offered him a boat-cloak on a cold night and he had said no, he was quite warm — his zeal for his King and country kept him warm. It sounds absurd, as I tell it, does it not? And was it another man, any other man, you would cry out “oh, what pitiful stuff” and dismiss it as mere enthusiasm; but with him you feel your bosom glow.’
Master and Commander – Patrick O’Brian
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He was not afraid for his skin, not afraid for himself: but presently his climbing body, now half-way up the shrouds, let him know that for its own part it was in a state of rapidly increasing terror. Forty feet is no very great height, but it seems far more lofty, aerial and precarious when there is nothing but an insubstantial yielding ladder of moving ropes underfoot; and when Stephen was three parts of the way up cries of ‘Belay’ on deck showed that the staysails were set and their sheets hauled aft. They filled, and the Sophie heeled over another strake or two; this coincided with her leeward roll, and the rail passed slowly under Stephen’s downward gaze, to be followed by the sea — a wide expanse of glittering water, very far below, and directly underneath. His grip on the ratlines tightened with cataleptic strength and his upward progress ceased: he remained there spreadeagled, while the varying forces of gravity, centrifugal motion, irrational panic and reasonable dread acted upon his motionless, tight-cramped person, now pressing him forward so that the checkered pattern of the shrouds and their crossing ratlines were imprinted on his front, and now plucking him backwards so that he bellied out like a shirt hung out to dry.
Master and Commander – Patrick O’Brian
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‘I said, “Did you bump your head, sir?” ‘
‘Yes,’ said Stephen, looking at his hand: astonishingly it was not covered with blood — there was not even so much as a smear.
‘It’s these old beams, sir’ — in the unusually distinct, didactic voice used at sea for the landsmen and on land for half-wits — ‘You want to take care of them; for — they — are — very — low.’ Stephen’s look of pure malevolence recalled the steward to a sense of his message and he said, ‘Could you fancy a chop or two for breakfast, sir?’
Master and Commander – J.K. Rowling
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‘Come, sir, cannot I prevail upon you to go to sea? A man-of-war is the very thing for a philosopher, above all in the Mediterranean: there are the birds, the fishes — I could promise you some monstrous strange fishes — the natural phenomena, the meteors, the chance of prize-money. For even Aristotle would have been moved by prize-money. Doubloons, sir: they lie in soft leather sacks, you know, about so big, and they are wonderfully heavy in your hand. Two is all a man can carry.’
Master and Commander – Patrick O’Brian
The Love Pirate 