Flying Colours (Hornblower Saga #8)

by C.S. Forester

Oderint dum metuant — the Caesar Caligula’s maxim

For some reason which I cannot fully analyze a fresh-water fisherman can never be suspected of evil intent — except possibly by the fish.”

The British genius for invective and propaganda had long discovered that it paid better to exploit trivialities rather than inveigh broadly against policies and principles;

Empires collapse at a rate increasing in geometrical progression,

“You are the sort of man,” she went on, “whom women love very easily. I do not expect that I shall be the last. I don’t think that you will ever love anybody, or know what it is to do so.”

in Bush’s stern philosophy mankind — naval mankind at least — was born to sorrow and difficulty and danger, and any variation from such a state of affairs must be viewed with suspicion and not enjoyed too much lest it should have to be paid for at compound interest.

It was always startling to detect in himself qualities which he admired in other men.

pop-eyed and pineapple-headed.

“The lucky man,” said Lady Barbara, “is usually the man who knows how much to leave to chance.”

He never could contrive to feel proud of himself; there was something vaguely ridiculous about the name ‘Sir Horatio Hornblower’, just as he always felt there was something vaguely ridiculous about himself.

Happiness was a Dead Sea fruit that turned to ashes in the mouth, decided Hornblower, generalizing recklessly from his own particular experience. Prospect, and not possession, was what gave pleasure, and his cross-grainedness would deprive him, now that he had made that discovery, even of the pleasure in prospect. He misdoubted everything so much. Freedom that could only be bought by Maria’s death was not a freedom worth having; honors granted by those that had the granting of them were no honors at all; and no security was really worth the loss of insecurity. What life gave with one hand she took back with the other.