The Thirteen-Gun Salute Quotes

“First there was the sky, high, pure and of a darker blue than he had ever seen. And then there was the sea, a lighter, immensely luminous blue that reflected blue into the air, the shadows and the sails; a sea that stretched away immeasurably when the surge raised the frigate high, showing an orderly array of great crests, each three furlongs from its predecessor, and all sweeping eastwards in an even, majestic procession.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Thirteen-Gun Salute

“Perhaps there will be news from home waiting for us there. Lord, how I should love to know how things are going.’ ‘Oh so should I,’ cried Stephen. ‘Though it is not yet possible that there should be word of Diana and our daughter. Sometimes when I think of that little soul I grow quite lachrymose.’ ‘A few months of roaring and bawling and swaddling-clothes will soon cure you of that. You have to be a woman to bear babies.’ ‘So I have always understood,’ said Stephen.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Thirteen-Gun Salute

“What I meant was that if he could induce others to believe what he said, then for him the statement acquired some degree of truth, a reflection of their belief that it was true; and this reflected truth might grow stronger with time and repetition until it became conviction, indistinguishable from ordinary factual truth, or very nearly so.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Thirteen-Gun Salute

“Yet so far his mind had produced little; it turned and turned, but the turning, though arduous, was sterile. Some great man had said, ‘A thought is like a flash between two dark nights’: at present Stephen’s nights were running into one uninterrupted darkness, lit by no gleams at all. The coca-leaves he chewed had the property of doing away with hunger and fatigue, giving some degree of euphoria, and making one feel clever and even witty; he certainly had no appetite and he did not feel physically tired, but as for the rest he might have been eating hay.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Thirteen-Gun Salute

“he was hungry; and he was cross with his wife, who had said in her clear ringing voice, 'I will tell you what, Maturin, if this baby of ours has anything like the discontented, bilious, liverish expression you have brought down from town, it shall be changed out of hand for something more cheerful from the Foundling Hospital.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Thirteen-Gun Salute

“Ah,' said Loder, meaning by this that he regretted the turtle and the geese, that he thought Fox's refusal for his colleagues an abuse of authority, and that he for one dissociated himself from the barbarous incivility: a considerable burden for a single 'ah', but one that it bore easily.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Thirteen-Gun Salute

“the modesty and diffidence that the penniless, unemployed Standish had brought aboard were now no longer to be seen; and the assurance of a monthly income and a settled position had developed a displeasing and often didactic loquacity. He was also, of course, incompetent.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Thirteen-Gun Salute

“Tell me, sir, do you know of any banker that really understands his business? Some modern Fugger?' 'Oh, Stephen, if you please,' cried Jack.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Thirteen-Gun Salute

“adapted”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Thirteen-Gun Salute

“uxorious”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Thirteen-Gun Salute

“What I meant was that if he could induce others to believe what he said, then for him the statement acquired some degree of truth, a reflection of their belief that it was true; and this reflected truth might grow stronger with time and repetition until it became conviction,”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Thirteen-Gun Salute

“Lord, how I love the smell of coffee, bacon, toasted bread.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Thirteen-Gun Salute

“Do you remember I once said of Clonfert that for him truth was what he could make others believe?”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Thirteen-Gun Salute

“England and Ireland are small islands on the farthest western extremity of the world," said another monk. "They are so close together that they can scarcely be distinguished; birds flying at a great height may land on the one rather than on the other. But in face England is the larger."
"It is true that they are close together, and that it not always easy to distinguish them from a great distance; but then, sir, the same applies to right and wrong.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Thirteen-Gun Salute

“none of the peevishness and ill-nature so usual in the elderly.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Thirteen-Gun Salute

“IT HAD ALWAYS appeared to Jack Aubrey, ever since he was a little boy, that one of the purest joys in the world was sailing a small, well-conceived, weatherly boat: the purest form of sailing too, with the sheet alive in one’s hand, the tiller quivering under the crook of one’s knee and the boat’s instant response to the movement of either, and to the roll and the breeze. A more stirring, obvious joy, of course, in a moderate gale and a lively sea, but there was also a subtle delight in gliding over smooth water, coaxing every ounce of thrust from what light air there was: an infinitely varied joy.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Thirteen-Gun Salute

“Stephen's intense irritation lasted all the time he was climbing into the maintop, and this so took away from his dread and his habitual caution that Jack said, 'What a fellow you are, Stephen. When you choose you can go aloft like' - he was about to say 'a human being' but changed this before it quite left his gullet to 'like an able seaman.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Thirteen-Gun Salute

“expressed myself badly. What I meant was that if he could induce others to believe what he said, then for him the statement acquired some degree of truth, a reflection of their belief that it was true; and this reflected truth might grow stronger with time and repetition until it became conviction, indistinguishable from ordinary factual truth, or very nearly so.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Thirteen-Gun Salute

“all that wretched schoolmastering.’ ‘On some it acts like a poison, making them unfit for the society of grown men.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Thirteen-Gun Salute

“I am not master of words to tell you, Jack, the value of an exceedingly remote island to a naturalist, an uninhabited fertile volcanic island covered with a luxuriant vegetation, with no vile rats, dogs, cats, goats, swine, introduced by fools to destroy an Eden, an island untouched...”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Thirteen-Gun Salute