Dam’ few crowned heads

      And their Christianity don't run to morality, not far at least. They lie and deceive with a will, drink to excess, slaughter each other for amusement, and the women couple like stoats. The corollary to their adage that ‘a virtuous woman is a crown to husband’ is that there are dam’ few crowned heads in Abyssinia, and hear, hear! say I, for ’twould be a cruel shame to have all that splendid married pulchritude going to waste.



Flashman on the March, p.22, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


(With thanks to Dundrillon for suggesting this quote.)


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, morality.

You say you want a revolution

      “You imagine I act out of unscrupulous self-interest; true, all revolutionaries do. They agitate and harangue and justify every villainy in the name of high ideals; they lie, to delude the people, whom they hold in contempt. They seek nothing but their personal ends…”

Flashman and the Dragon, p.134, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.




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They're called food ethnographers these days

…I could see at a glance he was one of those snoopopathic meddlers who strut about with a fly-whisk, and a notebook, prodding lies out of the niggers* and over-tipping the dragoman on college funds.

Flashman and the Redskins, p.18, Pan Books edition, 1983.

*Flashman's use of racial epitahs is a continuing problem for more enlightened, contemporary readers. The inclusion of these passages should not be taken as tacit support of his misanthropic, 19th century view of race relations.



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I’m harmless, by comparison

Mind you. I’m harmless, by comparison – I don’t send ’em off, stuffed with lies and rubbish, to get killed or maimed for nothing except a politician’s vanity or a manufacturer’s profit. Oh, I’ll sham it with the best in public, and sport my tinware, but I know what I am, and there’s no room for honest pride in me, you see. But if there was – just a little bit, along with the disgust and hatred and selfishness – I’d keep it for them, those seven hundred British sabres.

Flashman at the Charge, p.123, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes,Charge of the Light Brigade, pride.