The Flashman gambit

      “I'll be jiggered!” cries he. “It's the Flashman gambit . . . grovel and whine — then strike when your man's off guard!”


Flashman and the Tiger, p.148, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, gambit.

The great curse of the new world

…and everywhere the Great Curse of the New World, the American Child, in all its raucous, spoiled, undisciplined, selfish ghastliness, the female specimens keeping up an incessant high-pitched whine and the male infants racketing like cow-pokes on payday. There’s nothing wrong with grown Americans, by and large; you won’t find heartier men or bonnier women anywhere, but the only remedy I can see for their children is to run Herod for President.

Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, pp.142-43, Harper Collins, 1995.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, children.

Momentarily lost

Blustering hadn’t helped me, and a look at Rudi’s mocking face told me that whining wouldn’t either. Robbed of the two cards which I normally play in a crisis, I was momentarily lost.

Royal Flash, p.93, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1978.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes,William Elphinstone, Elphy Bey.