Smash a few windows

      ‘Well, of course I find it funny! Dam’ ridiculous. Votes for women!’ The old gentleman snorted. ‘If you’d any sense you’d campaign to have the vote taken away from men — I’d smash a few windows myself if I thought it would keep clowns like Asquith out of Parliament.’


Mr American, p.186, Pan Books, paperback edition 1982.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, women's suffrage.

Over the wall

They’d been my associates in a botched attempt to rescue Max on the eve of his execution. We’d failed because (you’ll hardly credit this) the great clown had refused point-blank to escape because it didn’t sort with his imperial dignity, Austro-Hungarian royalty preferring to die than go over the wall.


Flashman on the March, p.5, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, dignity.

Some natural law

There is some natural law that ensures that whenever civilization talks to the heathen, it is through the person of the most obstinate, short-sighted, arrogant, tactless clown available. You recall McNaughten at Kabul, perhaps? Well, Allison could have been his prize pupil.

Flashman and the Redskins, p.232, Pan Books edition, 1983.

Tags:Flashman, Flashman quotes, law.

Greek heroes

I recognized the handwriting, and my heart gave a skip; when I opened it I got a turn, for it began, ‘To my beloved Hector,’ and I thought, by God she’s cheating on me, and has sent me the wrong letter by mistake. But in the second line was a reference to Achilles, and another to Ajax, so I understood she was just addressing me in terms which she accounted fitting for a martial paladin; she knew no better. It was a common custom at that time, in the more romantic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the whore-mongering, drunken clowns most of them were. However, the Greek heroes were probably no better, so it was not far off the mark.


Flashman, p.170, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.



Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,Ajax, Achilles, Hector.