Master and Commander Quotes

“She is remarkably dry,’ he said to Stephen who, preferring to die in the open, had crept up on deck,”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander

“But Mrs Dockray was not going to be told her duty by any young puppy without so much as an epaulette to his name and did I think a post-captain’s wife with nine years’ seniority was going to ruin her sprigged muslin in the bilges of my cockleshell? She should tell my aunt – my cousin Ellis – the First Lord of the Admiralty – bring me to a court-martial for cowardice, for temerity, for not knowing my business. She understood discipline and subordination as well as the next woman, or better; and “Come, my dear,” says she to Miss Jones, “you ladle out the powder and fill the cartridges, and I will carry them up in my apron.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander

“these weeks and months of precious seniority slipping away – already Douglas of the Phoebe, Evans on the West Indies station, and a man he did not know called Raitt had been made; they were in the last Gazette and now they were ahead of him on the immutable list of post-captains; he would be junior to them for ever.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master and 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; but he gave way with a tolerable show of civility”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander

“My point is that the admirable men of those times, the Cochranes, Byrons, Falconers, Seymours, Boscawens and the many less famous sailors from whom I have in some degree compounded my characters, are best celebrated in their own splendid actions rather than in imaginary contests; that authenticity is a jewel; and that the echo of their words has an abiding value.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander

“The newly-minted captain is told to let nothing stop him but to do nothing that would risk his ship or his crew.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master & Commander