He had been quite unprepared for this particular blow, striking under every conceivable kind of armour, and for some minutes he could hardly bear the pain, but sat there blinking in the sun. 'Christ,'...
Hatred the only moving force, a petulant unhappy striving - childhood the only happiness, and that unknowing; then the continual battle that cannot ever possibly be won; a losing fight against ill-hea...
Come athwart my hawse and I shall ride you down, you half-baked son of an Egyptian fart,’ to a wool-gathering jolly-boat; and art echoed from either shore.
But, however, I clapped a stopper over his capers.’ Dr Maturin was proud of his nautical expressions: sometimes he got them right, but right or wrong he always brought them out with a slight emphasis...
Because, sir, teaching young gentlemen has a dismal effect upon the soul.It exemplifies the badness of established, artificial authority. The pedagogue has almost absolute authority over pupils: he of...
At that time I attached a perhaps undue importance to staying alive, and I became moderately proficient with both the pistol and the small-sword.
Any innocent pleasure is a real good: there are not so many of them.
Another roll like that, and we shall have no masts,' said Pullings, as the remaining crockery, the glasses and the inhabitants of the gun-room all shot over to the lee. 'We'll lose the mizen first, Do...
A conquering race, in the place of that conquest, is rarely amiable; the conquerors pay less obviously than the conquered, but perhaps in time they pay even more heavily, in the loss of the humane qua...
He was a great believer in the healing powers of cheerfulness, if not of open mirth). Yet he had some faults, and one was a habit of dosing himself, generally from a spirit of enquiry, as in his perio...
These weeks and months of precious seniority slipping away – already Douglas of the Phoebe, Evans on the West Indies station, and a man he did not know called Raitt had been made; they were in the las...
There is here a striving, avid and worldly civilisation, of course; these huge and eager markets, to this incessant buying and selling, that make that self evident; but I had no conception of the ubiq...
Should very much like to see your excrement.’ ‘You shall, my dear sir, you shall.
For Captain Aubrey, as for the rest of brute creation, there were only two kinds of birds, the edible and the inedible.
You remember the Gordon riots, and all the tales about the Jesuits being behind the King’s madness and many other things. By the way, Stephen, those Fathers were not Jesuits, I suppose? I did not like...
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...
Would you expect a mutiny?’ ‘Mutiny in the sense of outright revolt and refusal of command? No. But from some of the people I expect muttering, discontent, ill-will; and nothing makes work slower or m...
Wondering just how Mr Church thought he had deserved anything short of impalement, Stephen walked into the cabin.
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,...
Why, sir, what's all this? Surely you have not forgot you are entertaining the Captain?''And how am I supposed to entertain the Captain, for all love?' asked Stephen. 'Am I to grin at him through a ho...