Master and Commander Quotes

“But you know as well as I, patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master & Commander

“...I have had such a sickening of men in masses, and of causes, that I would not cross this room to reform parliament or prevent the union or to bring about the millennium. I speak only for myself, mind - it is my own truth alone - but man as part of a movement or a crowd is indifferent to me. He is inhuman. And I have nothing to do with nations, or nationalism. The only feelings I have - for what they are - are for men as individuals; my loyalties, such as they may be, are to private persons alone.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master & Commander

“My dear creature, I have done with all debate. But you know as well as I, patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either MY COUNTRY, RIGHT OR WRONG, which is infamous, or MY COUNTRY IS ALWAYS RIGHT, which is imbecile.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master & Commander

“I have never yet known a man admit that he was either rich or asleep: perhaps the poor man and the wakeful man have some great moral advantage.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander

“Do you not find it happens very often, that you are as gay as Garrick at dinner and then by supper-time you wonder why God made the world?”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master & Commander

“Patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master & Commander

“For a moment Jack felt the strongest inclination to snatch up his little gilt chair and beat the white-faced man down with it...”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master & Commander

“Never mind manoeuvres, always go at them.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master & Commander

“He held up two fingers, in case a landman might not fully comprehend so great a number.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander

“Mr Babbington,' he said, suddenly stopping in his up and down. 'Take your hands out of your pockets. When did you last write home?' Mr Babbington was at an age when almost any question evokes a guilty response, and this was, in fact, a valid accusation. He reddened, and said, 'I don't know, sir.' 'Think, sir, think,' said Jack, his good-tempered face clouding unexpectedly...'Never, mind. Write a handsome letter. Two pages at least. And send it in to me with your daily workings tomorrow. Give your father my compliments and tell him my bankers are Hoares.' For Jack, like most other captains, managed the youngsters' parental allowance for them. 'Hoares,' he repeated absently once or twice, 'my bankers are Hoares,' and a strangled ugly crowing noise made him turn. Young Ricketts was clinging to the fall of the main burton-tackle in an attempt to control himself, but without much success.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master & Commander

“The words 'Very finely played, sir, I believe' were formed in his gullet if not in his mouth when he caught the cold and indeed inimical look and heard the whisper, 'If you really must beat the measure, sir, let me entreat you to do so in time, and not half a beat ahead.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master & Commander

“It is a great while since I felt the grind of bone under my saw,' he added, smiling with anticipation.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master & Commander

“Stephen nodded. 'Tell me,' he said, in a low voice, some moments later. 'Were I under naval discipline, could that fellow have me whipped?'He nodded towards Mr Marshall.
'The master?' cried Jack, with inexpressible amazement.
'Yes,' said Stephen looking attentively at him, with his head slightly inclined to the left.
'But he is the master...' said Jack. If Stephen had called the sophies stem her stern, or her truck her keel, he would have understood the situation directly; but that Stephen should confuse the chain of command, the relative status of a captain and a master, of a commissioned officer and a warrant officer, so subverted the natural order, so undermined the sempiternal universe, that for a moment his mind could hardly encompass it. Yet Jack, though no great scholar, no judge of a hexameter, was tolerably quick, and after gasping no more than twice he said, 'My dear sir, I beleive you have been lead astray by the words master and master and commander- illogical terms, I must confess. The first is subordinate to the second. You must allow me to explain our naval ranks some time. But in any case you will never be flogged- no, no; you shall not be flogged,' he added, gazing with pure affection, and with something like awe, at so magnificent a prodigy, at an ignorance so very far beyond anything that even his wide-ranging mind had yet conceived.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master & Commander

“Trollops are capital things in port, but will not do at sea.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master & Commander

“There is a systematic flocci-nauci-nihili-pilification of all other aspects of existence that angers me.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master & Commander

“Where there was no equality there was no companionship: when a man was obliged to say ‘Yes, sir,’ his agreement was of no worth even if it happened to be true.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander

“Oh, I shall plead guilty at once,’ said Stephen. ‘And I shall add that I was sitting in the powder-magazine with a naked light at the time, imagining the death of the King, wasting my medical stores, smoking tobacco and making a fraudulent return of the portable soup. What solemn nonsense it is’ – laughing heartily – ‘I am surprised so sensible a man as you should attribute any importance to the matter.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander

“What's wrong with (Captain) Jack Aubrey?"
"Everything, since he has a command and I have not.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master & Commander

“How wonderfully strange,' he thought, 'to be upset by this trifle; yet I am upset.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master & Commander

“The author says that when an angry impulse is not immediately expressed, it turns to melancholy.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master & Commander

“The Navy speaks in symbols and you may suit what meaning you choose to the words.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master & Commander

“Almost ready, sir,' said the sweating, harassed bosun. 'I'm working the cunt-splice myself.'

'Well,' said Jack, hurrying off to where the stern-chaser hung poised above the Sophie's quarter-deck, ready to plunge through her bottom if gravity could but have its way, 'a simple thing like a cunt-splice will not take a man of war's bosun long, I believe.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master & Commander

“I am so happy that you saw your epop.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master & Commander

“We understood one another better before ever I opened my mouth.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander

“I wonder, James, whether it is not too easy for a rich man to despise money”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander

“Are you very much attached to money?’ asked Stephen. ‘I love it passionately,’ said Jack, with truth ringing clear in his voice. ‘I have always been poor, and I long to be rich.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander

“Let us drink to the renewed success of Irish arms, and confusion to the Pope.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander

“I say these damned things,’ Jack went on, musing as they drank their bottle, ‘and don’t quite understand at the time, though I see people looking black as hell, and frowning, and my friends going “Pst, pst”, and then I say to myself, “You’re brought by the lee again, Jack.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander

“Well, it is somewhat clearer than the last,’ said Stephen. ‘Though I fancy invidious might answer better than insidious.’ ‘Invidious, of course. I knew there was something not quite shipshape there. Invidious. A capital word: I dare say you spell it with a V?”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander

“Hitherto, Jack had been too busy working up his crew to pay much attention to the education of his midshipmen, but he had looked at yesterday's slips and they, with a very suspicious unanimity, had shown the Sophie in 39°2I'N, which was fair enough, but also in a longitude that she could only have reached by cleaving the mountain-range behind Valencia to a depth of thirty-seven miles.
'What do you mean by sending me this nonsense?' he asked them. It was not really an answerable question; nor were many of the others that he propounded, and they did not, in fact, attempt to answer them; but they agreed that they were not there to amuse themselves, nor for their manly beauty, but rather to learn their professions; that their journals (which they fetched) were neither accurate, full, nor up to date, and that the ship's cat would have written them better; that they would for the future pay the greatest attention to Mr Marshall's observation and reckoning; that they would prick the chart daily with him; and that no man was fit to pass for a lieutenant, let alone bear any command ('May God forgive me,' said Jack, in an internal aside) who could not instantly tell the position of his ship to within a minute – nay, to within thirty seconds. Furthermore, they would show up their journals every Sunday, cleanly and legibly written.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master & Commander