’twasn’t really a war

. . . which, as Speedy observed , made you realise how downright foolish war can be.
      But then, ’twasn’t really a war, nor Arogee a proper battle. Like Little Big Horn , it was more a nasty skirmish, and like Big Horn it had an importance far beyond its size.


Flashman on the March, p.242, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, war.

The Flashman line

“But I should not account this one a fool, as you do. Did you not hear him answer Damash, saying much, but telling nothing?” He leaned towards me, nursing his spear, his eyes intent on mine. “Perhaps Damash is right and he is the kind of man the Dedjaz Napier would have sent to Masteet — a man of a long head, skilled in dissimulation and never aiming where he looks.” He smiled. “You are that man, are you not, Ras Flashman?”


Flashman on the March, p.188, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, fool.

Bred in the bone

      That, of course, was the point. She was my grand-daughter, and what’s bred in the bone . . . oh, but she’d hocussed me properly, playing shrinking Purity, and I’d been ready to shell out half my fortune — and I’d come within an ace of committing murder for her.



Flashman and the Tiger, pp.310-11, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, bone.

The best kind of Frog

... for he was the best kind of Frog, shrewd and tough as teak, but jolly and with no foolish airs.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.180, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, teak.

Carnal intent, hurrah!

      The discovery that you've been sold a pup is always disconcerting, but your reaction depends on age and experience. In infancy you burst into tears and smash something; in adolescence you may be bewildered (as I was when Lady Geraldine lured me into the long grass on flase pretence and then set about me with carnal intent, hurrah!); in riper manhood common sense usually tells you to bolt, which was my instinct on the Pearl River when I learned that my lorcha was carrying not opium, as I'd supposed, but guns for the Taiping rebels. But at sixty-one your brain works faster than your legs, so you reflect, and as often as not reach the right answer by intuition as well as reason.

Flashman and the Tiger, p.134, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.

 
Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, brain.

No-one’s fooled

It was the kind of face-saving settlement that’s arranged daily at Westminister and in parish councils, and no-one’s fooled except the public — and not all of them, either.


Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.133, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, public.

The wages of ambition

      I watched his sedan jogging away across the plain in the wake of his tatterdemalion regiment, and thought, well, there’s another damned fool gone to collect the wages of ambition. I was right — and wrong. He found his bed in the paddy, as I’d foretold, and hardly anyone remembers even his name nowadays, but you may say without him Chinese Gordon might never have had a look-in.

Flashman and the Dragon, p.143, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, ambition.

Thou art no fool

      Ilderim glanced at me witheringly, and bit his nail in scorn.
      ‘Bloody Lance,’ says he, ‘ye may be as the bravest rider in the British Army and God knows thou art no fool – but with women thou art a witless infant.’

Flashman in the Great Game, p.173, Pan edition, 4th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes, witless.

Flashman on religion

…I’ve never been fool enough to confuse religion with belief in God.

Flashman in the Great Game, p.127, Pan edition, 4th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,belief, religion.

Deceptions small and large

He’d spotted me for an old soldier, you see, which was all to the good; having detected me in a small deception, it never occurred to him to look for a large one.

Flashman in the Great Game, p.116, Pan edition, 4th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,deception.

He'd still be employable today

Mangles, at the Board of Control in London, had described it as ‘tranquil beneath the Company’s benevolent rule’, but he was a pompous ass with a talent for talking complete bosh on subjects on which he was an authority.

Flashman in the Great Game, p.65, Pan edition, 4th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,pompous, talent.

Wattling, no doubt

I stood there, wattling no doubt, and trying to think of a cutting retort – but interrupting a conversation between a woman and a cat ain’t as easy as it might seem. One tends to look a fool.

Flashman at the Charge, p.261, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,cat, conversation.

Too chancy

But I’ve never meddled if I could avoid it, where great affairs are concerned; it’s too chancy. Mind you, if I could have seen ahead I’d have sneaked into Raglan’s tent one night and brained the old fool, but I didn’t know, you see.

Flashman at the Charge, p.58, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,FitzRoy Somerset, Lord Raglan.

A good dissembler

I said it had been, but fortunately I was a good dissembler.
   ‘You must be,’ says he. 'And I speak as a politician, who knows how difficult it is to fool people.’
   ‘Well,’ says I, ‘my own experience is that you can fool some people all the time – and all the people sometimes. But I concede that it’s difficult to fool all the people at the same time.’

Flash For Freedom!, p.128, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1980.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,Abraham Lincoln.

Flashman don't fret

However, I’ve seen too much of life to fret over ifs and buts. There’s nothing you can do about them, and if you find yourself at the end of the day an octogenarian with money in the bank and drink in the house – well, you’d be a fool to wish that things had fallen out differently.

Royal Flash, p.57, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1978.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,fret.

Elphy Bey stood alone

Let me say that when I talk of disasters I speak with authority. I have served at Balaclava, Cawnpore, and Little Big Horn. Name the biggest born fools who wore uniform in the nineteenth-century – Cardigan, Sale, Custer, Raglan, Lucan – I knew them all. Think of all the conceivable misfortunes that can arise from combinations of folly, cowardice and sheer bad luck, and I’ll give you chapter and verse. But I still state unhesitatingly that for pure, vacillating stupidity, for superb incompetence to command, for ignarance combined with bad judgement – in short, for the true talent for catastrophe – Elphy Bey stood alone. Others abide our question, but Elphy outshines them all as the greatest military idiot of our own or any other day.

Flashman, pp.106-107, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes,William Elphinstone, Elphy Bey.

A fool's face

'I've seen you, Flashman, remember? Hah-ha! And you’ve got what they call "a fool's face". No disrespect: it means you look honest.'

Flashman, p.91, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,face,fool,honest.

Honest Scud East

But he was soft: one of Arnold's sturdy fools, manly little chaps, of course, and full of virtue, the kind schoolmasters love. Yes. he was a fool then, and a fool twenty years later, when he died in the dust at Cawnpore with a Sepoy's bayonet in his back. Honest Scud East; that was all that his gallant goodness did for him.




Flashman, p. 15, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.


Tags:
Flashman, Scud East.