Academic jealousy

…he was still larding his conversation with Latin tags — he’d been a mighty scholar, you see, before they rode him out of Oxford on a rail, for garroting the Vice-chancellor or running guns into Wadham, likely, tho’ he always claimed it was academic jealousy.



Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.39, Harper Collins, 1995.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, guns.

Beastly, stupid and helpless

I know the heathen, and their oppressors, pretty well, you see, and the folly of sitting smug in judgement years after, stuffed with piety and ignorance and book-learned bias. Humanity is beastly and stupid, aye, and helpless, and there’s an end to it. and that’s as true for Crazy Horse as it was for Custer…

Flashman and the Redskins, p.21, Pan Books edition, 1983.

Tags:Flashman, Flashman quotes, humanity.

Men in fear and rage

“What bleating breast-beaters like you can’t comprehend,” I went on at the top of my voice, while the toadies pawed at me and yapped for the porters, “is that when selfish frightened men—in other words, any men, red or white, civilized or savage—come face to face in the middle of a wilderness that both of ‘em want, the Lord alone knows why, then war breaks out, and the weaker go under. Policies don’t matter a spent piss—it’s the men in fear and rage and uncertainty watching the woods and skyline, d’you see, you purblind bookworm, you! And you burble about enlightenment, by God— ”

Flashman and the Redskins, p.20, Pan Books edition, 1983.

Tags:Flashman, Flashman quotes, conflict.

They're called food ethnographers these days

…I could see at a glance he was one of those snoopopathic meddlers who strut about with a fly-whisk, and a notebook, prodding lies out of the niggers* and over-tipping the dragoman on college funds.

Flashman and the Redskins, p.18, Pan Books edition, 1983.

*Flashman's use of racial epitahs is a continuing problem for more enlightened, contemporary readers. The inclusion of these passages should not be taken as tacit support of his misanthropic, 19th century view of race relations.



Tags:Flashman, Flashman quotes.