Patrick O'Brian Quotations

I have 60 years of reading to draw upon: naval memoirs, dispatches, the Naval Chronicles, family letters.

On a ship, everything is enclosed: the people are right on top of each other and can't get up and walk away.

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

My wife and I have spent most of our lives in France, and we are both pretty well bilingual, my wife more purely than I, since as a little girl she went to school in French Switzerland.

In a day when, if you insulted a man it might cost you your life, you were probably more civil.

You can't be happy if you're not tolerably happy with yourself. The addition of friends adds immeasurably to life.

A freewheeling mind can conceive a virtually infinite number of sequences, but just how that mind picks out and stores those that may perhaps be used later to deal with a given tension, a given situation, is far beyond my understanding.

I very much dislike being interviewed by the kind of journalist who tries to dig into your private life.

I have never written for an audience. On the other hand I do not write merely to please myself.

The function of the novel is the exploration of the human condition. Really, that's what it's all about.

Take a newspaper account of Waterloo or Trafalgar, with all the small advertisements: it seems much more real than reading about it in a history book.

In my case, I write in the past because I'm not really part of the present. I have nothing valid to say about anything current, though I have something to say about what existed then.

Since I grew up, I have never deliberately used any technique at all other than the physical shaping of my tale so that it more or less resembles what has been thought of as a novel for these last two hundred years.

The first interviews I gave were entirely unpleasant. You have people trying to trip you up with impolite questions that have nothing to do with the books. It's simply vulgar curiosity, and I won't have it.

When you're taking a fence on a horse, you don't think much; your body does all the thinking, and you're over or you're not over. It's much the same when you are doing a tricky thing with a pen. There are times when I'm writing very, very fast.

About my books, that's all that I think the public has, in its normal way, to know. My private life is, by definition, private.

I've never set out to seduce my reader. I don't see him at all clearly.

...I have had such a sickening of men in masses, and of causes, that I would not cross this room to reform parliament or prevent the union or to bring about the millennium. I speak only for myself, mind - it is my own truth alone - but man as part of a movement or a crowd is indifferent to me. He is inhuman. And I have nothing to do with nations, or nationalism. The only feelings I have - for what they are - are for men as individuals; my loyalties, such as they may be, are to private persons alone.

Why, sir," said he, looking about him, "what splendour I see: gold lace, breeches, cocked hats. Allow me to recommend a sandwich. And would you be contemplating an attack, at all?" "It had crossed my mind, I must admit," said Jack. "Indeed, I may go so far as to say, that I am afraid a conflict is now virtually inevitable. Did you notice we have cleared for action?

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

No man born of woman has ever understood spoken Portuguese.

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

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

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

It meant that Diana had not waited for any explanation, however halting and imperfect, but had condemned him unheard; and this showed a much harder, far less affectionate woman than the Diana he had known or had thought he knew - a mythical person, no doubt created by himself. It had of course been evident from her letter, which made no reference to his; but he had not chosen to see the evidence and now it was absolutely forced upon his sight it made his eyes sting and tingle again. And deprived of his myth he felt extraordinarily lonely.

Jack, you've debauched my sloth.

Touch and away, Jack?’ asked Stephen. ‘Touch and away? Do you not recall that I have important business there? Enquiries of the very first interest?’ To do with our enterprise? To do with this voyage?’ Perhaps not quite directly.

For my own part,' said Captain Aubrey, 'I have no notion of disliking a man for his beliefs, above all if he was born with them. I find I can get along very well with Jews or even...' The P of Papists was already formed, and the word was obliged to come out as Pindoos.

But the tale or narrative set in the past may have its particular time-free value; and the candid reader will not misunderstand me, will not suppose that I intend any preposterous comparison, when I observe that Homer was farther removed in time from Troy than I am from the Napoleonic wars; yet he spoke to the Greeks for 2,000 years and more.

Two weevils crept from the crumbs. 'You see those weevils, Stephen?' said Jack solemnly. I do.' Which would you choose?' There is not a scrap of difference. Arcades ambo. They are the same species of curculio, and there is nothing to choose between them.' But suppose you had to choose?' Then I should choose the right-hand weevil; it has a perceptible advantage in both length and breadth.' There I have you,' cried Jack. 'You are bit - you are completely dished. Don't you know that in the Navy you must always choose the lesser of two weevils? Oh ha, ha, ha, ha!

I do not say that all lawyers are bad, but I do maintain that the general tendency is bad: standing up in a court for whichever side has paid you, affecting warmth and conviction, and doing everything you can to win the case, whatever your private opinion may be, will soon dull any fine sense of honour. The mercenary soldier is not a valued creature, but at least he risks his life, whereas these men merely risk their next fee.

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.

Go and see whether the Doctor is about,’ said Jack, ‘and if he is, ask him to look in, when he has a moment.’ Which he is in the fish-market, turning over some old-fashioned lobsters. No. I tell a lie. That is him, falling down the companion-way and cursing in foreign.

Authority is a solvent of humanity: look at any husband, any father of a family,and note the absorption of the person by the persona, the individual by the role. Then multiply the family, and the authority, by some hundreds and see the effect upon a sea-captain, to say nothing of an absolute monarch.Surely man in general is born to be oppressed or solitary, if he is to be fully human; unless it so happens that he is immune to the poison.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Never mind manoeuvres, always go at them.

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.

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

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

He sat on as the sun's rays came slowly down through the trees, lower and lower, and when the lowest reached a branch not far above him it caught a dewdrop poised upon a leaf. The drop instantly blazed crimson, and a slight movement of his head made it show all the colours of the spectrum with extraordinary purity, from a red almost too deep to be seen through all the others to the ultimate violet and back again.

...looking angrily at the wombat: and a moment later, 'Come now, Stephen, this is coming it pretty high: your brute is eating my hat.' 'So he is, too,' said Dr. Maturin. 'But do not be perturbed, Jack; it will do him no harm, at all. His digestive processes--

For me the process works best with no interruptions, no breaks in the steady application, no letters to be answered, very little social life, no holidays; it is therefore a form of happy imprisonment.

They will not be pleased. But they know we must catch the monsoon with a well-found ship; and they know they are in the Navy--they have chosen their cake, and must lie on it.' You mean, they cannot have their bed and eat it.' No, no, it is not quite that either. I mean--I wish you would not confuse my mind, Stephen.

And she hates being managed - that is not the word I want. What is it, Maturin?' 'Manipulated.' 'Exactly. She is a dutiful girl - a great sense of duty: I think it rather stupid, but there it is - but still she finds the way her mother has been arranging and pushing and managing and angling in all this perfectly odious. You two must have had hogsheads of that grocer's claret forced down your throats. Perfectly odious: and she is obstinate - strong, if you like - under that bread-and-butter way of hers. It will take a great deal to move her; much more than the excitement of a ball.

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

I am in favour of leaving people alone, however imperfect their polity may seem. It appears to me that you must not tell other nations how to set their house in order; nor must you compel them to be happy.

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

Compulsion is the death of friendship.

We understood one another better before ever I opened my mouth

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

Sir,’ said Stephen, ‘I read novels with the utmost pertinacity. 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 breadth and depth and fewer constraints.

Wit is the unexpected copulation of ideas.

You are to consider that a certain melancholy and often a certain irascibility accompany advancing age: indeed it might be said that advancing age equals ill-temper. On reaching the middle years a man perceives that he is no longer able to do certain things, that what looks he may have had are deserting him, that he has a ponderous great belly, and that however much he may yet burn he is no longer attractive to women; and he rebels. Fortitude, resignation and philosophy are of more value than any pills, red, white or blue.