I'm blessed!

     ‘I should have thought you overheard, while you were asleep,’ said Mr Franklin caustically, ‘that Miss Delys is only a friend, that I’m married, and strange as it may seem to you, I’m faithful to my wife.’
     ‘You don’t say!’ The General seemed genuinely surprised. ‘Well, I’m blessed!’ He gave Mr Franklin a curious look. ‘You a Baptist, or something like that?’



Mr American, p.438, Pan Books, paperback edition 1982.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, Baptist.

Blow out your kite

      I can’t begin to describe the effect of hearing that pleasant, half-amused, half-impatient American voice issuing from the copper-red hawk face with its feathered braids; it was like having a Chinese mandarin suddenly bursting into “Boiled Beef and Carrots”.

Flashman and the Redskins, p.336, Pan Books edition, 1983.

Tags:Flashman, Flashman quotes, unexpected.

Half the art

      If half the art of survival is running, the other half is keeping a straight face. I can’t count the number of times my fate has depended on my response to some unexpected and abominable proposal—like the night Yakub Beg suggested I join a suicidal attempt to scupper some Russian ammunition ships, or Sapten’s jolly notion about swimming naked into a Gothic castle full of Bismark’s thugs, or Brooke’s command to me to lead a charge against a headhunter’s stockade. Jesu, the times we have seen.

Flashman and the Redskins, p.43, Pan Books edition, 1983.

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Full of rage and stupidity

The country was full of discontent and mischief, largely because England hadn’t had a real war in forty years, and only a few of us knew what fighting was like. The rest were full of rage and stupidity, and all because some papists and Turkish niggers* had quarrlled about the nailing of a star to a door in Palestine. Mind you, nothing surprises me.

Flashman at the Charge, p.14, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

*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.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,war, stupidity.