He will surely do

      They were the kind of words you’d expect to hear from a Brooke or a Custer, spoken with a heroic flourish and a fist on a table. Napier said them with all the fervour of a man reading a railway time-table . . . but I thought, farewell and adieu, Brother Theodore, your goose is cooked; this quiet old buffer with the dreary whiskers may not shout the odds, but what he says he will surely do.


Flashman on the March, pp.53-4, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, words.

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.

Half the art

      If half the art of survival is running, the other half is keeping a straight face. I can’t count the number of times my fate has depended on my response to some unexpected and abominable proposal—like the night Yakub Beg suggested I join a suicidal attempt to scupper some Russian ammunition ships, or Sapten’s jolly notion about swimming naked into a Gothic castle full of Bismark’s thugs, or Brooke’s command to me to lead a charge against a headhunter’s stockade. Jesu, the times we have seen.

Flashman and the Redskins, p.43, Pan Books edition, 1983.

Tags:Flashman, Flashman quotes, survival.

Club members

      I’d never seen this before, although I’ve seen it more times than I care to count since – one man, mad as a hatter and drunk with pride, sweeping sane heads away against their better judgement. Chinese Gordon could do it, and Yakub Beg the Kirghiz; so could J.E.B. Stuart, and that almighty maniac George Custer. They and Brooke could have formed a club.

Flashman's Lady, p.139, Pan edition, 1979.

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Lecturing interminably

…conversation consisted of Brooke lecturing interminably; like most active men. he had all the makings of a thoroughgoing bore.

Flashman's Lady, p.135, Pan edition, 1979.

Tags:Flashman, Flashman quotes, bore.

Pirates and roses

Well. well, thinks I, who’d have thought it: the mad pirate-killer and rose-fancier, spoony on Angie Coutts’s picture – I’ll bet that every time he contemplates it the local Dyak lasses have to scamper for cover.

Flashman's Lady, p.133, Pan edition, 1979.

Tags:Flashman, Flashman quotes, scamper.

The White Rajah

      ‘Hold on, though – what can he do, if even the navy’s powerless?’
      ‘He’s J.B.,’ says Stuart, simply, with that drunk, smug look you see on a child’s face when his father mends a toy.

Flashman's Lady, pp.127-28, Pan edition, 1979.

Tags:Flashman, Flashman quotes, James Brooke.