The Far Side of the World Quotes

“That would be locking the horse after the stable door is gone, a very foolish thing to do.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Far Side of the World

“Come all you thoughtless young men,
a warning take by me
And never leave your happy homes
to sail the raging sea.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Far Side of the World

“If I were a woman I should march out with a flaming torch and a sword; I should emasculate right and left.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Far Side of the World

“Stephen's heart was big to bursting with the violence of his grief, yet even as he looked distractedly from side to side his mind told him that there was something amiss, the more so as the cheering had now almost entirely died away. The whaler had a huge spread of canvas aboard, far too great a press of sail for her possibly to enter the lagoon: she was tearing along with a great bow-wave and she sped past the mouth of the farther channel. A cable's length beyond the Opening her main and fore topgallantmasts carried clean away, as though brought down by a shot, and she instantly hauled to the wind, striking her colours as she did so. Her pursuer came racing into sight round the southern cape, studdingsails aloft and alow on either side—a dead silence from the motionless Norfolks below—fired a full, prodigal broadside to leeward, lowered down a boat and began to reduce sail, cheering like a ship clean out of her mind with delight.
'She is the Surprise,' said Stephen, and he whispered, 'The joyful Surprise, God and Mary be with her.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Far Side of the World

“Martin was a thoroughly amiable man, a man of wide reading, but when he came to write he mounted upon a pair of stilts, unusually lofty stilts, and staggered along at a most ungracious pace, with an occasional awkward lurch into colloquialism, giving a strikingly false impression of himself.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Far Side of the World

“all agree that the people are most uncommonly amiable and good-looking, their only faults being cannibalism and unlimited fornication. But neither of these is erected into a religious system, oh no: the divine offerings are invariably swine, the cannibalism being simply a matter of taste or inclination; while the fornication has nothing ceremonial or compulsory about it.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Far Side of the World

“The Surprise's crew, like most seamen, were a hypochondriacal set of ghouls upon the whole, and they loved a surgical operation almost as much as they loved a prize. But whereas the amputation of a shipmate's arm or leg had disadvantages of which they were fully sensible, a trepanning had none: the patient had but to survive to have all his former powers restored - to be as good as new, with the glory of a silver plate and an anecdote that would last him and his friends to the grave.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Far Side of the World

“Stephen and Higgins began bleeding all hands. They only took eight ounces from each, but this, bowl after bowl, amounted to nine good buckets with foam of an extraordinary beauty: but they had rather more than their fair share of fools who would be fainting, because as the breeze declined and the heat increased a sickly slaughterhouse reek spread about the deck; and one of them (a young Marine) actually pitched into a brimming bucket as he fell and caused three more to lurch, so angering Dr Maturin that the next half dozen patients were drained almost white, like veal, while guards were placed over the buckets that remained.
However, it was all over in an hour and fifteen minutes, both surgeons being brisk hands with a fleam; the corpses were dragged away by their friends to be recovered with sea-water or vinegar, according to taste; and finally, seeing that fair was fair, each surgeon bled the other.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Far Side of the World

“Why, sir,' said the lawyer, 'if the persecution were tortious, and if it happened at sea, or even on fresh water or reasonably damp land, the Admiralty court would no doubt have cognizance.'
'Pray, sir,' said Stephen, 'just how damp would the land have to be?'
'Oh, pretty damp, pretty damp, I believe. The judge's patent gives him power to deal with matters in, upon, or by the sea, or public streams, or freshwater ports, rivers, nooks and places between the ebb and flow of the tide, and upon the shores and banks adjacent - all tolerably humid.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Far Side of the World

“The back of my hand to guilt.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Far Side of the World

“Invincible ignorance could not be enlightened; and”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Far Side of the World

“Stephen observed, ‘I have seen many examples of the seaman’s volatility, but none equal to this. When you recall the last week, culminating in the events of yesterday – no longer ago than yesterday itself – when you recall the silent, anxious and I might almost say haunted faces, the absence not only of the usual laughter but even of quips and small-wit, and the collective sense of impending, ineluctable doom, and when you compare that with today’s brisk gaiety, the lively eye, the hop, skip and jump, why, you are tempted to ask yourself whether these are not mere irresponsible childish fribbles …’ ‘Fribble yourself,’ murmured the gunroom steward the other side of the door, where he was finishing the officers’ wine with Killick. ‘… or weathercocks. But then you reflect that these same people circumnavigate the entire terraqueous globe, sometimes in trying circumstances, which argues a certain constancy.’ ‘I have heard their levity put down to there being no more than a nine-inch plank between them and eternity,’ said Martin. ‘Nine-inch?’ said the purser, laughing heartily. ‘Why, if you are given to levity with nine inches under you, what must you be in a little old light-built frigate? A flaming gas-balloon, no doubt. God – dear me, there are parts of Surprise’s bottom where you could push a penknife through with ease. Nine-inch! Oh lord, ha, ha, ha!”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Far Side of the World

“Hollom was going forward along the larboard gangway: Nagel, an able seamen but one of the most sullen, bloody-minded and argumentative of the Defenders, was coming aft on the same narrow passage. They were abreast of one another; and Nagel walked straight on without the slightest acknowledgement other than a look of elaborate unconcern.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Far Side of the World

“Since the sheets were half-flown the sails instantly split at the seams, the maintopsail shaking so furiously that the masthead must have gone had not Mowett, the bosun, Bonden, Warley the captain of the maintop and three of his men gone aloft, laid out on the ice-coated yard and cut the sail away close to the reefs.

Warley was on the lee yardarm when the footrope gave way under him and he fell, plunging far clear of the side and instantly vanishing in the terrible sea.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Far Side of the World

“I dare say they are hauling away the cat before hooking on the fish.’ Pocock said, ‘Perhaps they will stopper with a dog.’ Stephen said, ‘It is my belief that they have raised a mouse, and that having seized it with a fox they will clap on a lizard.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Far Side of the World

“They might not be beautiful, but they were certainly suffering.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Far Side of the World

“If it is a question of trepanning, I am your man. It is an operation I have performed scores, nay hundreds of times without losing a patient. That is to say except in a very few cases of vicious cachexy, where it was only done to please the relations. I trepanned Mrs Butcher for a persistent migraine, and she has never complained since.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Far Side of the World

“The stern broad-shouldered spear-girl and her jollier companion seemed to think them to some degree their property. The one opened the drinking-coconuts and passed them, the other handed the dried fishes, one by one. But not very valuable property: the spear-girl, whose name appeared to be Taio, looked at the white, hairy, waterlogged, waterwrinkled skin of Jack's leg where his trousers were rolled back, and uttered a sound of sincere and candid disgust, while the other one, Manu, took hold of a lock of his long yellow hair, now untied and hanging down his back, plucked out a few strands, turned them in her fingers and tossed them over the side, shaking her head and then carefully washing her hands.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Far Side of the World

“like most normally constituted writers Martin had no use for any candid opinion that was not wholly favourable.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Far Side of the World

“he felt the effect of the wine well before his glass was emptied - a very slight swimming in his head, the faint birth of a certain benignity, a willingness to be pleased with his company.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Far Side of the World

“There is something wonderfully comfortable about having a lady's legs under one's table, Aubrey.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Far Side of the World

“Even the best-conducted women [...] have an aversion for the impotent,” [...] so one should conceal one’s wounds and hide the crippling deficiencies of life – poverty, misfortune, sickness, ill-success. People begin by being touched and moved to tenderness by their friends’ distress; presently this changes to pity, which has something humiliating about it; then to a masterful giving of advice; and then to scorn.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Far Side of the World

“From a misanthrope Bacchus makes me sociable … Yet on the other hand I had already bowed and smiled; I had performed at least the motions of complaisancy; and how often have I not observed that the imitation begets the reality.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Far Side of the World

“and one of them (a young Marine) actually pitched into a brimming bucket as he fell and caused three more to lurch, so angering Dr Maturin that the next half dozen patients were drained almost white, like veal, while guards were placed over the buckets that remained.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Far Side of the World

“and since a tyrant’s position is a little less insecure if the discontent can be directed at a foreigner, who knows what imaginary crimes may not be fastened upon our people?”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Far Side of the World

“you cannot expect old heads on young shoulders;”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Far Side of the World