Inner Flashman

He paused again. “Shall I continue?”
       At this point, when it was plain that some beastly folly was about to be unveiled, Inner Flashman would gladly have cried: “Not unless you wish to risk seeing a grown man burst into tears and run wailing into the Abyssinian night!” Outer Flashman, poor devil, could only sit sweating nonchalantly, going red in the face with funk and hoping that Napier might construe it as apoplectic rage at the prospect of having my travel plans upset.


Flashman on the March, p.51, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, folly.

A killing rage

      They fought like madmen — and perhaps that was their undoing, for whenever the attack was beaten back they leaped down into the trenches to mutilate our wounded. Well, you don’t do that to Atkins, Sepoy and Ghurka if you know what’s good for you; our people stormed back at ’em in a killing rage, and when the scaling-ladders wouldn’t reach they climbed on each other’s shoulders and on the piled dead, and fairly pitchforked the Sikhs our of their first line of entrenchments, almost without firing a shot.


Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.338, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, rage.

Men in fear and rage

“What bleating breast-beaters like you can’t comprehend,” I went on at the top of my voice, while the toadies pawed at me and yapped for the porters, “is that when selfish frightened men—in other words, any men, red or white, civilized or savage—come face to face in the middle of a wilderness that both of ‘em want, the Lord alone knows why, then war breaks out, and the weaker go under. Policies don’t matter a spent piss—it’s the men in fear and rage and uncertainty watching the woods and skyline, d’you see, you purblind bookworm, you! And you burble about enlightenment, by God— ”

Flashman and the Redskins, p.20, Pan Books edition, 1983.

Tags:Flashman, Flashman quotes, conflict.