Down in Pennyfields

‘I’d apologise for shaming you at the Athenaeum, but the sooner you’re out of that awful hole, the better. If they turf you out, come to me, I’ll put you up for a decent place — Madame Desirée’s, off the Haymarket, or a Chinese establishment I know down in Pennyfields.’



Mr American, p.392, Pan Books, paperback edition 1982.


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Chinese proverb

Be patient, and at last the mulberry leaf will become a silk robe.



Flashman and the Dragon, p.172, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



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Flashman and the art of Chinese calligraphy

. . . a little chap was waiting with a bag of silver and a scroll, which I was invited to sign with a paint-brush. When in Rome . . . I painted him a small cat sitting on a wall, he beamed and I strode out to the cart . . .


Flashman and the Dragon, p.95, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



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Flashman, friend of the worker

…the coolies could be seen languidly pursuing the only two occupations known to the Chinese peasant: to wit, standing stock-still up to the knees in paddy-water holding a bullock on a rope, or shifting mud very slowly from one point to another. Deny them these employments, and they would simply lie down and die, which a good many of them seemed to do anyway.

Flashman and the Dragon, p.19, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.

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Fiercer and stronger

(And you won’t teach John Chinaman different by blowing his cities apart with artillery, or trampling his country underfoot. Well, if a footpad knocks you down, or a cannibal eats you, it don’t follow that he’s your superior, does it? Fiercer and stronger, perhaps, but infinitely lower in the scale of creation. That’s how the Chinese think of us — and damn the facts that stare ’em in the face.)

Flashman and the Dragon, pp.16-17, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.

Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, Chinese.

Blow out your kite

      I can’t begin to describe the effect of hearing that pleasant, half-amused, half-impatient American voice issuing from the copper-red hawk face with its feathered braids; it was like having a Chinese mandarin suddenly bursting into “Boiled Beef and Carrots”.

Flashman and the Redskins, p.336, Pan Books edition, 1983.

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Cryptic sayings

‘Put no faith in women, and as much in the Chinese,’ says Kutebar cryptically.

Flashman at the Charge, p.221, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes,women, Chinese.