Let ’em try

A scandal was averted, and Sir Harry, taxed with his behaviour by indignant lawyers — principally his own, a sorely-tried and ready-witted practitioner in Wine Office Court — claimed total innocence of any attempt to pervert the course of justice. On being assured that he might easily have been prosecuted for conspiracy, the old soldier had remarked scornfully: ‘Let ’em try to put a ninety-two-year-old hero of Balaclava in the Scrubs if they dare. There’d be a revolution.’ And there that particular aspect of the case rested, with not a few sighs of relief.


Mr American, p.394, Pan Books, paperback edition 1982.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, justice.

Squiffy Asquith and the human hawk

. . . the defendants were represented by two of the best hatchet-men in the business, Charles Russell and young Asquith — you know the latter as the buffoon who infests Number 10 Downing Street at the moment, and my recollection of him is as a shining morning face to which I once presented a prize at the City of London School, but for all that he was accounted a sharp hand in court, while Russell was a human hawk, and looked it.

Flashman and the Tiger, p.248, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, lawyer.

Life at the American bar

He was a Switzer, though American-born, named Kagi… He’d been a teacher, and had fought in Kansas, where he’d distinguished himself by shooting a judge — who in turn put three slugs into Kagi, which gives you some notion of what life at the American bar was like in those days.


Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.229, Harper Collins, 1995.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, judge.

Flashman the non-Founding Father

      It’s understandable, to be sure: they have to live with their ancestors’ folly and pretend that it was all for the best, and that the monstrous collection of platitudes which they call a Constitution, which is worse than useless because it can be twisted to mean anything you please by crooked lawyers and grafting politicos, is the ultimate human wisdom. Well, it ain’t, and it wasn’t worth one life, American or British, in the War of Independence, let alone the vile slaughter of the Anglo-Saxon-Norman-Celtic race in the Civil War. But perhaps you need to stand on Cemetery Ridge after Pickett’s charge to understand that.
      I put these thoughts to Lincoln, you know, after the war, and he sat back, cracking his knuckles and eyeing me slantendicular.
      “Flashman the non-Founding Father is a wondrous thought,” says he.

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


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, constitution.

To a man

They were the most tireless old bores you ever struck, red herring worshippers to a man…


Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.134, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, bore.

Words versus axe-handles

   ‘Well, you can handle a team, surely?’ cries the merry Senator. ‘Why not make your fortune out of axe-handles?’
   ‘Well, sir, I’ll tell you,’ says Lincoln, and everyone listened, grinning. ‘I’ve just put the return on axe-handles at one thousand per centum. But I’m a politician, and sometime lawyer. Axe-handles aren’t my style; my stock-in-trade is spoken words. You may believe me, words can be obtained wholesale a powerful sight cheaper’n axe-handles – and if you take ’em to the right market, you’ll get a far richer return for ’em than a thousand per centum. If you doubt me – ask President Polk.’

Flash For Freedom!, pp.130-31, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1980.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,Abraham Lincoln, words.