A curious, knowing expression

‘Well good-night to you, young Franklin. Yes give me a call one of these days. Perhaps you can tell me a few tales, instead. You’re an interesting chap, you know.’ The grostesquely-mottled old face with its flowing whiskers wore a curious, knowing expression. ‘Knew it the first time I saw you. Yes. You’ve got gunfighter’s eyes.’


Mr American, p.439, Pan Books, paperback edition 1982.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, eyes.

Growing old disgracefully

There was the sound of a newspaper being violently crumpled, a creaking of springs, and elderly arthritic gasps, and then a man emerged from behind the screen. He was extremely old and extremely large; Mr Franklin had an impression of stalwart height, and massive shoulders encased in a beautifully-cut frock coat of antique design, with a flower in its button-hole; above, reared a striking head of silver hair framing a lined, mottled face half-concealed by magnificent flowing white whiskers. It was the face of an aged, inebriated satyr, with a prominent, heavily-veined nose and dark, bloodshot eyes which glared past Mr Franklin at the conversing couple . . .


Mr American, p.184, Pan Books, paperback edition 1982.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, satyr.

Stinging at the memory

It reminded me of the Madagascar forest, and you mayn’t believe it but I felt my eyes stinging at the memory of Elspeth blue-eyed and beautiful, smiling up at me with her golden hair tumbled about her head on the grass, her arms reaching up to me and those lovely lips parting . . . “My jo, my ain dear jo!”


Flashman on the March, p.135, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, memory.

In his prime

. . . if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I’d not have believed it — and I knew Hickok in his prime, remember, before his eyesight went, and John Wesley Hardin, too.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.282, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, prime.

Everywhere but into mine

“Chelmsford’s wiped out, you say?” The blue eyes looked everywhere but into mine; I wouldn’t have trusted this fellow with the mess funds in a hurry.



Flashman and the Tiger, p.281, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, trust.

Worn uncommon well

      By the time of Tranby, to be sure, Elspeth was of an age where it should have been unlikely that either Bertie or Cumming would try to drag her behind the sofa, but I still didn't care to think of her within the fat-fingered reach of one or the trim moustache of t’other. She’d worn uncommon well; middle sixties and still shaped like a Turkish belly-dancer, with the same guileless idiot smile and wondrous blue eyes that had set me slavering when she was sixteen — she'd performed like a demented houri then and who was to say she’d lost the taste in half a century?

Flashman and the Tiger, p.224, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, sofa.

An imposing old file

 From all I’d heard in the past three days, I’d formed a picture of John Brown as a towering figure with flowing white locks, glaring like a fakir and brandishing an Excelsior banner in one fist and a smoking Colt in t’other; what I saw was an elderly man, spare and bony in an old black suit, like a rather seedy farmer come to town for market. He had a long aquiline nose, large ears, and deep-set eyes under heavy brows. An imposing old file, you’d have said, but nothing out of the ordinary — until you met the gaze of those eyes, clear bright grey and steady as a rock. Gunfighter’s eyes, was my first thought, but they weren’t cold; you knew they could twinkle or blaze (and I was to see ’em do both), but what I remember most was their level certainty. No one was ever going to make this man drop his gaze, or talk him out of anything.

Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, pp.206-07, Harper Collins, 1995.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, certainty.

A wee crack

…and then the bearded man and I were alone in the silent gallery, with the powder smoke still wraithing in the sunbeams from the glass roof, and the blood wet on the planks. He pulled a flask from his pocket and handed it to me.
      “Tak’ your time,” says he, “and we’ll have a wee crack, you and I.” He was a nondescript fellow, in his shabby suit, but with an eye bright and unwinking as a bird’s questing over me and missing nothing, and while he wasn’t above middle height I guessed that anyone who ran into him would come away bruised.

Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.163, Harper Collins, 1995.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, flask.

Offensively chipper

Only Brooke was still offensively chipper as ever, clean-shaven and alert, for all that his eyes looked like streaky bacon…

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

Tags:Flashman, Flashman quotes, eyes.

Glitter in the eyes

His eyes took on that glitter that you see in camp-meeting preachers and company accountants.

Flashman's Lady, p.147, Pan edition, 1979.

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A quick look

I was roaring above the noise, at her, swearing I loved her and that she could still save herself, and she shot me a quick look as she took the mare’s bridle – just for an instant, but it’s stayed with me for fifty years, and you may think me an old fool and fanciful, but I’ll swear there were tears in her eyes…

Flashman in the Great Game, pp.314-5, Pan edition, 4th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes, look.

Carry thine eyes

‘Call Makarram Khan a pig just once more, ulla kabaja,* and I will carry thine eyes and genitals on this point as kebabs’.

* Son of an owl.

Flashman in the Great Game, p.118, Pan edition, 4th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,genitals, kebab.

Young peepers

You never saw such young peepers in a tired old face.

Flashman in the Great Game, p.38, Pan edition, 4th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,eyes, Lord Palmerston.

Demon kings and fools

I suppose he was a bit of a demon king, with his forked beard and skull-lock, and that rare thing in Central Asia, which they say is a legacy of Alexander’s Greek mercenaries – the bright blue eyes of the European. And he had the happiest smile, I think, that ever I saw on a human face. You only had to see it to understand why the Syr Daria tribes carried on their hopeless struggle against the Russians; fools will always follow the Yakub Begs of this world.

Flashman at the Charge, p.242, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes,Yakub Beg, fools.

Spoilt child of fortune

His nose was beaky and his eyes blue and prominent and unwinking - they looked out on the world with the serinity that marks the nobleman whose uttermost ancestor was born a nobleman too. It is the look your parvenu would give half his fortune for, that unruffable gaze of the spoilt child of fortune who knows with unshakable certainty that he is right and that the world is exactly ordered for his satisfaction.

It is the look that makes underlings writhe and causes revolutions. I saw it then , and it remained changeless as long as I knew him, even through the roll-call beneath Causeway Heights when the grim silence as the names were shouted out testified to the loss of five hundred of his command. 'It is no fault of mine,' he said than, and he didn't just believe it; he knew it.



Flashman, p. 31, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, James Brudenell, Lord Cardigan.