The Year of the French Quotes

“Music and dance. What I have written must surely suggest a people cursed by Heaven,... No people on earth, I am persuaded, loves music so well, nor dance, nor oratory, though the music falls strangely on my ears... More than once I have been at Mr. Treacy's when at close of dinner, some traveling harper would be called in, blind as often as not, his fingernails kept long and the mysteries of his art hidden in their horny ridges. The music would come to us with the sadness of a lost world, each note a messenger sent wandering among the Waterford goblets. Riding home late at night, past tavern or alehouse, I would hear harps and violins, thudding feet rising to a frenzy. I have seen them dancing at evening on fairdays, in meadows decreed by custom for such purposes, their bodies swift-moving, and their faces impassive but bright-eyed, intent. I have watched them in silence, reins held loosely in my hand, and have marveled at the stillness of my own body, my shoulders rigid and heavy.”
― Thomas Flanagan, The Year of the French

“We possess ideas, but we are possessed by feelings. They lie too deep for understanding, astir with their own secret life and carrying us with them.”
― Thomas Flanagan, The Year of the French

“If you mean to protest slavery, you might put in a word for your own. There are no worse slaves in this barony than those poor lads you bring in from the hiring fair and keep half starved on potatoes an honest man would not throw to sows.”
― Thomas Flanagan, The Year of the French

“These two were educated men with some pretensions to breeding, and to them and men like them must fall the full responsibility for the calamity which had befallen their country. But for them, the peasants killed by Crauford’s dragoons or battered to death upon the bogs might have lived out their lives upon the friendly acres of their native Mayo.”
― Thomas Flanagan, The Year of the French

“We have had a close shave, I can tell you. If the French had landed in force, if the peasants throughout the country had rallied to them. The Irish must be taught a lesson. London will expect that. We are schoolmasters as well, you see. Scullery maids and hangmen and schoolmasters. The lessons taught by armies are hard ones.”
― Thomas Flanagan, The Year of the French

“We went armed, your uncle and myself, although it was against the Protestant laws for Papists to bear arms. But the roads were dangerous in those days, footpads and highwaymen and rapparees.”
― Thomas Flanagan, The Year of the French

“He was fighting not for them but for a word. Ireland. Not moorlands and rivers, not people, but a word. The word was a bell, vibrant and thrilling, ringing through her memories of conversations. Ireland. Ireland was oppressed. Ireland must fight for its freedom. Ireland must take its place among the nations of the world.”
― Thomas Flanagan, The Year of the French

“he (Cornwallis) was as keen-eyed as ever, discoursing upon his campaigning days in America twenty years before, and most interestingly upon the subject of Washington, whom he regarded as a most overrated commander, although a man of estimable personal qualities.”
― Thomas Flanagan, The Year of the French

“By what right did we lure children to their deaths, caught by a glint of light on metal, a trumpery banner?”
― Thomas Flanagan, The Year of the French

“May not political passion be a net which holds the heart distant from all that has nourished it?”
― Thomas Flanagan, The Year of the French

“It is within my mind that this quarrel rages, an untidy battle whose frontiers I cannot measure.”
― Thomas Flanagan, The Year of the French

“The man who conquered Ireland could be a match for the man who did not conquer Egypt.”
― Thomas Flanagan, The Year of the French

“I have the greatest respect for General Buonaparte, as every soldier must. But he will make out of Egypt a catastrophe for France. The Revolution has but one enemy, England. And the place to strike England is close to her home.”
― Thomas Flanagan, The Year of the French

“A man may be ill regarded in his community, but hang him, or even imprison him, and he becomes a popular hero, the subject of tearful or indignant tavern ballads.”
― Thomas Flanagan, The Year of the French

“There is an image stuck in my mind, but I have no words for it. It gives me no peace. ’Tis a queer backward way of making verse, like going through a door arse first.”
― Thomas Flanagan, The Year of the French

“A system more ingeniously contrived, first for the debasement, and then for the continuance in that debasement, of an entire people cannot easily be imagined.”
― Thomas Flanagan, The Year of the French