Don't mistake

      Why, Flashy, you ask, this ain’t pity or sentiment, surely? Not a bit of it: don’t mistake disgust and contempt for the tormentor with compassion for the victim.


Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.339, Harper Collins, 1995.


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Distance always lends enlightenment

…if enough of the brutes had escaped the whole beastly business would have been to do again, with consequent loss of British and Sepoy lives. That’s something the moralists overlook (or more likely don’t give a dam about) when they cry: “Pity the beaten foe!” What they’re saying, in effect, is: “Kill our fellows tomorrow rather than the enemy today.” But they don’t care to have it put to them like that; they want their wars won clean and comfortable, with a clear conscience. (Their conscience being much more precious than their soldiers’ lives, you understand.) Well, that’s fine, if you’re sitting in the Liberal Club with a bellyful of port on top of your dinner, but if you rang the bell and it was answered not by a steward with a napkin but an Akali with a tulwar, you might change your mind. Distance always lends enlightenment to the view, I’ve noticed.


Flashman and the Mountain of Light, pp.344-5, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.




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A broken firing-pin

      ‘Good God, you don’t mean to say,’ cries I, genuinely appalled, ‘that he got his knocker shot off?’
      ‘Let’s not think about it,’ says he, but I can tell you I went about wincing for the rest of the evening. Poor old White Raja – I mean, I’m a callous chap enough, but there are some tradgedies that truly wring the heart. Mad about that delectable little bouncer Angie Coutts, despot of a country abounding with the juiciest of dusky flashtails just itching for him to exercise the droit de seigneur, and there he was with a broken firing-pin. I don’t know when I’ve been more deeply moved. Still if J.B. were the first man in to rescue Elspeth, she’d be safe enough.

Flashman's Lady, p.133-34, Pan edition, 1979.

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Stay, cruel despot!

Now, I don’t recite all these barbarities to shock or excite your pity, or to pose as one of those holy hypocrites who pretend to be in a great sweat about man’s inhumanity to man. I’ve seen too much of it, and know it happens whenever strong folk have absolute power over spiritless creatures. I merely tell you what I truly saw – as for my own view, well I’m all for keeping the peasants in order, and if hammering ’em does good, and makes life better for the rest of us, you won’t find me leaping between the tyrant and his victim crying ‘Stay, cruel despot!’…

Flashman at the Charge, p.146, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes,villain, despot.