Wings to my wits

      There’s no doubt about it, I’m good at dealing with barmy savages. They scare the bile out of me, and perhaps terror lends wings to my wits, for when i think of the monsters I’ve conversed with and come away with a whole skin, more or less . . . Mangas Colorado, Ranavalona, General Sang-kol-in-sin, Crazy Horse, Dr. Arnold, God knows who else . . . well, it took more than luck, I can tell you. You must know when to grovel and scream for mercy, but also when to take ’em aback with impudence or argument or pure bamboozle.


Flashman on the March, pp.189-90, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, terror.

You bloody vandals

      My first thought was, why, you bloody vandals, I don’t shock easy, and have no more of the milk of human kindness than you’d put in a cup of tea; I’ll taunt and gloat over a fallen foe any day, and out a boot in his ribs if he sasses back — but I’m a brute and a bully. These were your upstanding pillars of society, bursting with Christian piety and love thy neighbour, and here they were, shaking their sanctimonious heads as they harassed and goaded a seemingly dying man… They even had the effrontery to argue and hector him, now that he was beat and helpless — I’d have liked to see ’em argue with him eight hours back, when he was standing up with his guns on.


Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.339, Harper Collins, 1995.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, taunt.

Flashman on game theory

     There’s a moment in any trial between two persons, whether it’s a game or an argument or a battle of wits or a duel to the death, when Party A thinks he’s got Party B cold. And that, believe it or not, is the moment when A is most vulnerable, if only B has the sense to see it.


Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.131, Harper Collins, 1995.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, game.

Speak not of love Flashy

      ‘What did you ever know of love?’ cries he. ‘Let me hear that word on your lips again, and I’ll have them sewn together, with a scorpion in your mouth!’
      Well, when he put it like that, I saw there was no point in arguing.

Flashman's Lady, p.190, Pan edition, 1979.

Tags:Flashman, Flashman quotes, scorpion.