Knee slapping

He slapped his knee, merry as a maggot.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.121, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


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Flashman on American independence

      But try telling that to a smart New Yorker, or an Arkansas chawbacon, or a pot-bellied Virginian Senator; point out Canada and Australia managed their way to peaceful independence without any tomfool Declarations or Bunker Hills or Shilohs or Gettysburgs, and are every bit as much “the land of the free” as Kentucky or Oregon, and all you’ll get is a great harangue about “liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, damn your Limey impudence, from the first; a haw-haw and stream of tobacco juice across your boots from the second; and a deal of pious fustian about a new nation forged in blood emerging into the sunlight under Freedom’s flag, from the third. You might as well be listening to an intoxicated Frog.

Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.105, Harper Collins, 1995.


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Many friends

“Yes, my bucko, I’m warm — and I draw enough water in this colony, as you’ll find if you cross me. Felicitas habet multos amicos,* you know!”


*Happiness has many friends.


Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, pp.41-2, Harper Collins, 1995.



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Aren't you Flashman?

      “I don’t believe it!” cries he eagerly. “Aren’t you Flashman?”
      “So I am,” says I warily, wondering if he was married.

Flashman and the Redskins, p.252, Pan Books edition, 1983.

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Nothing as gleeful

There’s nothing as gleeful as a Pathan when he’s doing the dirty…

Flashman in the Great Game, p.176, Pan edition, 4th printing, 1979.

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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.