A malevolent eye

     The port did not circulate very long after the ladies had left, however. General Flashman, rendered even more reminiscent by the champagne he had consumed, joined the group around the King at the table head and launched into a vivid recollection of how his majesty, as a youthful Prince of Wales fifty years before, had been compromised by an Actress in Ireland, to the dismay of the other guests and the suppressed fury of the King. To make matters worse, the old man took to calling the King 'young Bertie', and an unpleasant scene was prevented only by Soveral's tactful suggestion that they should join the ladies, who would be eager for bridge. The King, glaring thunderously, took the hint and led the way from the dining room: General Flashman cocked a malevolent eye and observed: 'Bridge, eh? Played it in Russia before you lot were born. Game for half-wits.' and then fell asleep over the decanter.


Mr American, p.198, Pan Books, paperback edition 1982.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, reminiscent.

Inner Flashman

He paused again. “Shall I continue?”
       At this point, when it was plain that some beastly folly was about to be unveiled, Inner Flashman would gladly have cried: “Not unless you wish to risk seeing a grown man burst into tears and run wailing into the Abyssinian night!” Outer Flashman, poor devil, could only sit sweating nonchalantly, going red in the face with funk and hoping that Napier might construe it as apoplectic rage at the prospect of having my travel plans upset.


Flashman on the March, p.51, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, folly.

Blind luck

      You’ll have difficulty finding Ferozeshah (or Pheeroo Shah, as we Punjabi purists call it) in the atlas nowadays. It’s a scrubby little hamlet about halfway between Ferozepore and Moodkee, but in its way it’s a greater place than Delhi or Calcutta or Bombay, for it’s where the fate of India was settled — appropriately by treachery, folly, and idiot courage beyond belief. And most of all, by blind luck.



Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.245, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.



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Cardinal folly

Master Ignatieff might be a clever and devilish dangerous man, but he had at least one of the besetting weaknesses of youth: he was as vain as an Etonian duke, and it led him to commit the cardinal folly in a diplomatic man. He talked too much.

Flashman at the Charge, p.207, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

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It isn't courage

God knows it isn’t courage, but I wish I had a guinea for every time I’ve come through some hellish crisis, babbling thankfully to be still alive – and then committed some idiocy which I wouldn’t dare to contemplate in a rational moment.

Royal Flash, p.241, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1978.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes.

Laying down the law

I have soldiered in too many countries and known too many peoples to fall into the folly of laying down the law about any of them.



Flashman, p. 51, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

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He was greedy

But he was greedy, and I've lived long enough to discover that there isn't any folly a man won't contemplate if there's money or a woman at stake.



Flashman, p. 49, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

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Flashman, greedy, folly.