No thought to spare

. . . Flashy in ecstatio has no thought to spare for tottering thrones or collapsing empires, let alone beastly rivals collecting their well-deserved rations.



Flashman on the March, p.99, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, spare.

Pretty ramshackle

He beagn by asking me what I knew of the Austrian Empire. I retorted that they seemed to be good at losing wars and territory, having been licked lately by France, Prussia, and Italy, for heaven’s sake, and that the whole concern was pretty ramshackle. Beyond that I knew nothing and cared less.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.86, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, empire.

Flashman on the British Empire

You’ll have heard it said that the British Empire was acquired in a fit of absence of mind — one of those smart Oscarish squibs that sounds well but is thoroughly fat-headed. Presence of mind, if you like — and countless other things, such as greed and Christianity, decency and villainy, policy and lunacy, deep design and blind chance, pride and trade, blunder and curiosity, passion, ignorance, chivalry and expediency, honest pursuit of right, and determination to keep the bloody Frogs out. And as often as not, such things came tumbling together, and when the dust had settled, there we were, and who else was going to set things straight and feed the folk and guard the gate and dig the drains — oh, aye, and take the profits, by all means.



Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.24, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, empire.

Elgin's fads

      “Synonymous be damned!” snaps Elgin. “H.M.G will not be drawn into war against the Taipings. We’d find ourselves with a new empire in China before we knew it.” He heaved up from the table and poured coffee from a spirit kettle. “And I have no intention, Parkes, of presiding over any extension of the area in which we exhibit the hollowness of our Christianity and our civilization. Coffee, Flashman? Yes, you can light one of your damned cheroots if you want to—but blow the smoke the other way. Poisoning mankind!”
      There you have three of Elgin’s fads all together — he hated tobacco, was soft on Asiatics, and didn’t care for empire-building. I recall him on this very campaign saying he’d do anything “to prevent England calling down God’s curse on herself for brutalities committed on yet another feeble Oriental race.” Yet he did more to fix and maintain the course of the British empire than any man of his day, and is remembered for the supreme atrocity. Ironic, ain’t it?


Flashman and the Dragon, pp.163-4, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, Elgin.

Vicerage morality, nursery discipline

… I just sat muching jaka*, but I couldn’t help listening to her, being reminded of that old harridan Lady Sale, tapping her mittened fingers while the jezzail bullets whistled round her on the Kabul retreat, and demanding acidly why something was not done about it. Aye. it’s comical in it’s way – and yet, when you’ve seen the mem-sahibs pursing their lips and raising indignant brows in the face of dangers and horrors that set their men-folk shaking, you begin to understand why there’s all that pink on the map. It’s vicerage morality, nursery discipline, and a thorough sense of propriety and sanitation that have done it – and when they’re gone, and the mem-sahibs with them, why, the map won’t be pink any longer.

*dried meat

Flashman's Lady, p.283, Pan edition, 1979.

Tags:Flashman, Flashman quotes, empire.

A cheery place

Oh, it was a cheery place alright, this great empire of Russia as I first saw it in the autumn of ’54 – a great ill-worked wilderness ruled by a small landed aristocracy with their feet on the necks of a huge human-animal population, with Cossack devils keeping order when required.

Flashman at the Charge, p.126, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,Russian empire, Cossacks.

Shivering with horror

...I was there, you see, shivering with horror as I watched, unlike the good Londoners, who let the roughnecks and jailbirds keep their empire for them; they are good enough for getting cut up at the Gandamacks which fools like Elphy and McNaghten bring’em to, and no great loss to anybody.

Flashman, p.206, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes.