The Surgeon's Mate Quotes

“The lookout that first sights the cat shall have ten guineas and remission of sins, short of mutiny, sodomy, or damaging the paintwork.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Surgeon's Mate

“And although in many cases these unions proved happy enough, sailors being excellent husbands, often away and handy about the house when ashore, it did make for a curious gathering when the spouses were invited to a ball.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Surgeon's Mate

“Were you ever in Elsinore, Mr Jagiello?’ asked Jack.
Oh, many a time, sir,’ said Jagiello. ‘I know it well. I believe I could show you Hamlet’s grave from here.’
I was really wondering whether they had ten or thirteen inch mortars on the upper terrace,’ said Jack, ‘but I should be very happy to see Hamlet’s grave as well.’
Both ten and thirteen, sir. And if you go a little to the right from the farthest turret, there are some trees: and among those trees there is the grave. You can just make out the rocks.’
So there he lies,’ said jack, his telescope leveled. ‘Well, well: we must all come to it. But it was a capital piece, capital. I never laughed so much in my life.’
A capital piece indeed,’ said Stephen, ‘and I doubt I could have done much better myself. But, do you know, I have never in my own mind classed it among the comedies. Pray did you read it recently?’
I never read it at all,’ said Jack. ‘That is to say, not right through. No: I did something better than that—I acted in it. There, the upper terrace fires. I was a midshipman at the time.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Surgeon's Mate

“If men were to consider what they were at - if if they were to look around them, and reflect upon the cost of life in a universe where prisons, brothels, madhouses, and regiments of men armed and trained to kill other men are so very common - why, I doubt we should see many of these poor mewling little larval victims, so often a present misery to their parents and a future menace to their kind.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Surgeon's Mate

“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 of satisfaction, much as others might utter a particularly apt Greek or Latin quotation. ‘And brought him up with a round stern,’ he added.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Surgeon's Mate

“(She) threw Stephen a quick, apologetic glance and ran into the house. She might be in a strange hurry of spirits, but she moved with the perfect, unconscious grace that had always touched him, and he felt a wave of tenderness, allied to his former passionate love; perhaps its ghost.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Surgeon's Mate

“Physically he was tired and his body relaxed throughout its entire length; his mind was in much the same state, floating free, detached, as though he had taken his old favourite, the tincture of laudanum. He felt no particular anxiety. The attempt must either succeed or fail: he hoped with all his heart for success, but 'all his heart' did not amount to a great deal now that some essential part of its core seemed to have died. Yet on the other hand he felt more able to command success in that it meant no less to him - to command it with a strength that arose not from a fundamental indifference to his own fate but from something resembling it that he could not define; it had a resemblance to despair, but a despair long past, with the horror taken out of it.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Surgeon's Mate

“But is that not corruption, Jack? You were always very much against corruption when you were young, I mean younger.’ ‘So I am still: corruption in others is anathema to me. But you would scarcely credit the depths of turpitude I should descend to myself for a thousand a year;”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Surgeon's Mate

“A young person for Monsieur Jagiello,’ said the guard, with a grin. He stood away from the door, and there was the young person, holding a cloth-covered basket, blushing and hanging her pretty head. The others walked away to the window and talked in what they meant to be a detached, natural way; but few could help stealing glances at the maiden, and none could fail to hear Jagiello cry, ‘But my dear, dear Mademoiselle, I asked for black pudding and apples, no more. And here is foie gras, a gratin of lobster, a partridge, three kinds of cheese, two kinds of wine, a strawberry tart . . . ’ ‘I made it myself,’ said the young person. ‘I am sure it is wonderfully good: but it is much more than I can ever afford.’ ‘You must keep up your strength. You can pay for it later – or in some other way – or however you like.’ ‘But how?’ asked Jagiello, in honest amazement. ‘By a note of hand, do you mean?’ ‘Pray step into the passage,’ said she, pinker still. ‘There you are again,’ said Jack, drawing Stephen into another room. ‘Yesterday it was a thundering great patty, with truffles; and tomorrow we shall see a wedding-cake for his pudding, no doubt. What they see in him I cannot conceive. Why Jagiello, and the others ignored? Here is Fenton, for example, a fine upstanding fellow with side-whiskers that are the pride of the service – with a beard as thick as a coconut – has to shave twice a day – as strong as a horse, and a very fair seaman; but there are no patties for him.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Surgeon's Mate

“Put those pistols down at once,’ he said coldly. ‘Do not you know it is very rude to point a pistol at a person you do not mean to kill? For shame, Villiers. Where were you brought up?”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Surgeon's Mate

“And yet in a way one might say that the whole of life is a tissue of prodigious coincidences”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Surgeon's Mate

“Every man is a hero of his own tale. Surely, Dr Maturin, every man must look on himself as wiser and more intelligent and more virtuous than the rest, so how could he see himself as the villain, or even as a minor character?”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Surgeon's Mate

“It is only a woman’s cookery, to be sure,’ he said, toying with a chocolate mousse, ‘and I do not know that I should trust her with game; but within these wide limits, how very good it is! She must be a knowing old soul, with great experience, no doubt in excellent service before the Revolution. Perhaps something of a slut: your amiable slut makes the best of cooks.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Surgeon's Mate

“If men were to consider what they were at – if they were to look about them, and reflect upon the cost of life in a universe where prisons, brothels, madhouses, and regiments of men armed and trained to kill other men are so very common – why, I doubt we should see many of these poor mewling little larval victims, so often a present misery to their parents and a future menace to their kind.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Surgeon's Mate

“I mean to digest my buzzard in my cot. - Stephen Maturin”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Surgeon's Mate

“and I warn you that at the least attempt you will find yourself incarcerated at Bitche. At Bitche, sir, and incarcerated.'
Jack felt that he was on the verge of a flashing piece of repartee, of one of the best things he had ever said in his life: 'then indeed I should be bitched', or 'that would bitch my chances, I am sure', or something more brilliant still; but the want of a true colloquial link between the English bitch and the French chienne baffled him; the anticipatory smile faded, and he only said, 'Oh, as for that, sir, I dare say I shall be your guest until the end of the war. Let us hope that it will not be so long delayed that I wear out my welcome.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Surgeon's Mate

“Stephen, what is the French for a double sister-block, coaked? With a pair of them and a proper hold-fast, I could raise the Temple.'
'A double sister-block, coaked? The Dear alone can tell. I do not even know what it is in
English.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Surgeon's Mate

“Here Captain Babbington let fall his courses and some pretty severe remarks about the sloth of the midshipmen at the larboard gaskets, a sloth that foretold
the ruin of the Navy within a very short lapse of time. He had just uttered this prophecy, which he had first heard from Jack at the age of twelve, when a tall shadow fell across the deck, and turning he saw the original prophet himself, looking nervous, apprehensive, uneasy, timid, a striking sight for one who had gone into action with Captain Aubrey as often as William Babbington.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Surgeon's Mate

“Nelson once said that love of his country served him for a greatcoat.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Surgeon's Mate

“Should I feel better if I were to vomit?’ asked Jagiello. ‘I doubt it,’ said Stephen. ‘It has done nothing for the Colonel.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Surgeon's Mate

“These Danes have always been a very froward people. Do you know, Jack, what they did at Clonmacnois? They burnt it, the thieves, and their queen sat on the high altar mother-naked, uttering oracles in a heathen frenzy. Ota was the strumpet’s name. It is all of a piece: look at Hamlet’s mother. I only wonder her behaviour caused any comment.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Surgeon's Mate

“he observed that it was strange how differently wine took different men – some grew glum and fault-finding, some quarrelsome or tearful; for his part he found it did not affect him at all, except perhaps to make him like people rather more, and to make the world seem a more cheerful place. ‘Not that it could be much more cheerful than it is already,’ he added,”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Surgeon's Mate