Wellington's joke

I did my best, and like a fool ventured Wellington's joke when the Queen asked him what was the aroma from the ranks of the Guards, and Nosey replied: “Esprit de corps, ma’am.”


Flashman and the Tiger, p.127, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, esprit de corps.

Nursing his blood lust

But mostly he was nursing his blood lust, I knew, anticipating the pleasure of shooting assassins — in the back no doubt. He was what Hickook called “a killing gentleman”, was our young Willem. Just like dear old dad.

Flashman and the Tiger, p.126, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, assassin.

So damned military

      “I bumped into the sergeant of the guard, accidental-a-purpose. A waxed-moustached old turnip-head who's so damned military he probably rides his wife by the numbers — almost ruptured himself comin’ to attention when I happened by.”


Flashman and the Tiger, p.123, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, military.

A dull world

... it would be a dull world if there were no subalterns in it. Quieter, mind you.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.123, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, subaltern.

Bright-eyed excitement

“Sign of nerves, Starnberg. You just want wish it was over and done with.”
      It didn't deflate him a bit. “Nerves yourself!” scoffs he. “If you mean I'm lookin' forward to it, you're right.” I believed him for I'd seen the same bright-eyed excitement at the prospect of slaughter in idiots like Brooke and Custer, and it's the last thing you need when your own fears are gullet-high.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.122, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, fear.

Knee slapping

He slapped his knee, merry as a maggot.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.121, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, knee.

That's doctor to you

...and the linseed lancer, taking his cue, muttered about secondary reaction and delayed muscular lesions...


Flashman and the Tiger, p.120, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, doctor.

Rendered maudlin

She was anxious for me, you see, the besotted little aristo — it's remarkable how even the most worldly of women can be rendered maudlin by Adam's arsenal.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.115, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, maudlin.

No half-measures

      One of the lessons I'd impress on young chaps is this: if you want to pull a bluff, do it with your might, no half-measures. However unlikely the ploy, if your neck is brazen enough, it's odds on you'll get away with it. Take the time I was caught in flagrante in a Calcutta hotel by an outraged husband and sold him on the idea I was a doctor sounding her chest, or the occasion when they found me climbing through Jefferson Davis's skylight and I pretended to be a workman come to fix his lightning-rod. A moment's guilty hesitation and I'd have been done for; indignant astonishment at being interfered with saw me through.

Flashman and the Tiger, p.115, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, bluff.

Red-handed

Pity the traps hadn't caught him red-handed; ten years of skilly and fetters would have done him a power of good.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.114, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, caught.

Dreams of Spring

“Aha, but we'll have him presently, rari nantes in gurgite vasto,* and be damned to him!”

* Swimming dispersedly in the vasty deep. - Virgil


Flashman and the Tiger, p.114, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, Latin.

A consoling hand

...Prussians, you know, care not two damns about their inferiors. Neither do I, but I know it's good business to pretend that I do, and looked in on Beefy before retiring to lay a consoling hand upon his thick skull; he just gaped like a ruptured bullock.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.113, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, bullock.

Hello, hello, hello

I've been collared more often than Bill the Burglar...


Flashman and the Tiger, p.108, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, burglar.

Decent cabbage

...Austria's contribution to civilization must surely be the art of cooking cabbage decently...


Flashman and the Tiger, p.102, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, cabbage.

The lives of thousands

      “You mean you’re game?” cries he eagerly. “You’re with us?”
      “Suppose you tell me why I should be.”
      “How could you not?” Kralta couldn't believe her ears, like a queen with a farting courtier. “With the peace of Europe in the balance, and the lives of thousands, perhaps millions at stake?”


 Flashman and the Tiger, p.90, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, peace.

Prefer to substitute

     Somewhere or other that downy bird Kipling observes that the lesson of the island race is to put away all emotion and entrap the alien at the proper time.* I learned it in my cradle, long before he wrote it, and have practised it all my life with some success, and only this difference, that for “entrap” I prefer to substitute “escape”.

* Footnote 16: The quotation is from "In Ambush", in Stalky & Co.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.89, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, entrap.

An ornery lot

“Know anythin’ about Hungary?”
      I understood it was the biggest state in the empire bar Austria itself, and that the natives were an ornery lot, but fine horseman.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.86, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, Hungary.

Pretty ramshackle

He beagn by asking me what I knew of the Austrian Empire. I retorted that they seemed to be good at losing wars and territory, having been licked lately by France, Prussia, and Italy, for heaven’s sake, and that the whole concern was pretty ramshackle. Beyond that I knew nothing and cared less.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.86, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, empire.

Backhanded tribute

It's a backhanded tribute to the memory of the late unlamented Rudi Von Starnberg that my first impulse on meeting his offspring was to look for the communication cord and bawl for help. Time was I’d ha’ done both, but when you've reached your sixties you've either learned to bottle your panic, sit tight, and think like blazes . . . or you haven't reached your sixties, mallum?*

* understand?


Flashman and the Tiger, p.77, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, panic.

Flashman on toast

“ ‘It’s an English school for you, my son,’ he told me. ‘Hellish places, by all accounts, rations a Siberian moujik wouldn’t touch, and less civilised behaviour than you’d meet in the Congo, but I’m told there’s no education like it − a lifetime’s trainin’ in knavery packed into six years. No wonder they rule half the world. Why, if I’d been to Eton or Harrow, I’d have had Flashman on toast!’ ”


Flashman and the Tiger, p.77, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, school.