Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Jack, you've debauched my sloth.
Compulsion is the death of friendship.
Never mind manoeuvres, always go at them.
Wit is the unexpected copulation of ideas.
I sew his ears on from time to time, sure.
No man born of woman has ever understood spoken Portuguese.
Other people's marriages are a perpetual source of amazement.
We understood one another better before ever I opened my mouth
We are always the most violent against those whom we have injured.
After all a book can be represented as a conversation with one’s demon.
I've never set out to seduce my reader. I don't see him at all clearly.
... it has always seemed to me that books are the supreme decorations of a room
The Navy speaks in symbols and you may suit what meaning you choose to the words.
That would be locking the horse after the stable door is gone, a very foolish thing to do.
The sensation of falling into the past is not unlike that of coming home for the holidays.
I have never written for an audience. On the other hand I do not write merely to please myself.
In a day when, if you insulted a man it might cost you your life, you were probably more civil.
It is a great while since I felt the grind of bone under my saw,' he added, smiling with anticipation.
There is a systematic flocci-nauci-nihili-pilification of all other aspects of existence that angers me.
The function of the novel is the exploration of the human condition. Really, that's what it's all about.
I very much dislike being interviewed by the kind of journalist who tries to dig into your private life.
I have 60 years of reading to draw upon: naval memoirs, dispatches, the Naval Chronicles, family letters.
I know of few men over 50 that seem to me entirely human, virtually none who has long exercised authority.
Stephen had spared no expense in making himself more unhappy, his own position as a rejected lover clearer.
On a ship, everything is enclosed: the people are right on top of each other and can't get up and walk away.
Although wealth may not bring happiness, the immediate prospect of it provides a wonderfully close imitation.
I have often observed that extremely violent noise and activity go with good-fellowship and heightened spirits.
You can't be happy if you're not tolerably happy with yourself. The addition of friends adds immeasurably to life.
For very strangely his officers looked upon Jack Aubrey as a moral figure, in spite of all proofs of the contrary...
Likings arise when one has no earthly reason for liking - the most wildly improbable marriages and uncommon friendship.
For a moment Jack felt the strongest inclination to snatch up his little gilt chair and beat the white-faced man down with it.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
...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--
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.
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.
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.
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.