We rode north

In the morning we rode north into one of the world’s awful places – the great pass of the Khyber, where the track twists among the sun-scorched cliffs and the peaks seem to crouch in ambush for the traveller



Flashman, p.83, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,awful,Khyber Pass,places.

The field of honour

'…don’t wait to die on the field of honour.’ He said it without a sneer. ‘Heroes draw no higher wages than the others, boy. Sleep well.’



Flashman, p.83, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,die,heroes,honour.

His name was Avitabile

…none was uglier or looked readier for mischief than the governor of the place [Peshawar], a great, grey-bearded ox of a man in a dirty old uniform coat, baggy trousers, and a gold-tasselled forage cap. He was Italian of all things, with the spiky waxed moustache that you see on organ-grinders nowadays, and he spoke English with a dreadful dago American accent. His name was Avitabile, and the Sikhs and Afghans were more scared of him than the devil himself…



Flashman, pp. 81-82, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,Avitabile,Italian.

The greatest bore

Travelling, I think, is the greatest bore in life, so I’ll not weary you with an account of the journey from Calcutta to Kabul.

Flashman, p.81, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes, travel, travelling.

A good enough army

It was a good enough army, part Queen’s troops, part Company’s, with British regiments as well as native ones, but it was having its work cut out trying to keep the tribes in order, for apart from Dost’s supporters there were scores of little petty chiefs and tyrants who lost no opportunity of causing trouble in the unsettled times and the usual Afghan pasttimes of blood-feud, robbery and murder-for-fun were going ahead full steam.



Flashman, p.80, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes, Afghan, army, past time.

Learn a foreign tongue

I give the advice for what it is worth: if you wish to learn a foreign tongue properly, study it in bed with a native girl – I’d have got more of the classics from an hour’s wrestling with a Greek wench than I did in four years from Arnold.

Flashman, p.71, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes, learn, foreign language.

A shade too plump

If anything she was a shade too plump. but she knew the ninety-seven ways of making love that the Hindus are supposed to set much store by – though mind you, it is all nonsense, for the seventy-fourth position turns out to be the same as the seventy-third, but with your fingers crossed.

Flashman, p.71, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes, plump.

Fortune

...and by that time I had taken fortune by the foreskin, in my own way.

Flashman, p.69, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, foreskin, fortune.

Better countries

There may be better countries for a soldier to serve in than India, but i haven't seen them. You may hear the greenhorns talk about heat and flies and filth and the natives and the diseases; the first three you must get accustomed to, the fifth you must avoid - and as for the natives well, where else will you get such a docile, humble set of slaves? I liked them better than the Scots, anyhow; their language was easier to
understand.



Flashman, p.68, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

A rake and a harlot

'With me and Judy,' says he, very softly. 'And I'm not sure that the company of a rake and a harlot won't be better for her than yours.'



Flashman, p.67, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Vale George MacDonald Fraser

We all live under false pretences. You just have to put on a bold front and brazen it through.

George MacDonald Fraser, OBE, novelist and screenwriter
2 April, 1925 - 2 January, 2008

The Scottish custom

When it was done, and the guests had begun to drink themselves blind, as is the Scottish custom, Elspeth and I were seen off in a carriage by her parents.



Flashman, p.63, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, custom, wedding.

Less bleak

I applied myself to the brandy, and things seemed less bleak.



Flashman, p.62, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, bleak, brandy.

Marry or die

Marry or die - that was what it amounted to, for I'd no doubt he would be damnably efficent with the barkers.




Flashman, p.62, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, marry, die.

What they call a plunger

He looked at me sharp, head on one side. 'Good,' says he. 'This makes it easier. I had thought you might be a smooth one, but I see you're what they call a plunger.'





Flashman, p.60, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, plunger.

Elspeth smiling

But it stayed with me, that queer, empty feeling in my inside, and of all the recollections of my life there isn't one that is clearer than of that warm evening by the Clyde, with Elspeth smiling at me beneath the trees.





Flashman, p.58, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Elspeth, Clyde.

A perfect shield

In her, ignorance and stupidity formed a perfect shield against the world: this, I suppose, is innocence.


Flashman, p.58, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, innocence, ignorance, stupidity.

Elementary human relations

Ignorant women I have met, and I knew miss Elspeth must rank high among them, but I had not supposed until now that she had no earthly idea of elementary human relations. (Yet there were even married woman in my time who did not connect their husband's antics in bed with the conception of children.)


Flashman, pp. 57 - 58, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, ignorant, marital relations, antics,

Many a slip

However, there's many a slip 'twixt the crouch and the leap, as the cavalry used to say.



Flashman, p. 55, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, slip, crouch, leap,

Grim work

It was grim work, I may tell you, for she was a sour tyrant of a woman and looked on me as she looked on all soldiers, Englishmen and men under fifty years of age - as frivolous, Godless, feckless and unworthy.




Flashman, p. 54, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Englishmen, godless, unworthy, soldiers

Fading beauty

Four heads inclined in reply, and one nodded - this was Mistress Morrison, a tall, beak-nosed female in whom one could detect all the fading beauty of a vulture.





Flashman, p. 54, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, vulture, mother-in-law.

A file of red coats

Well, thought I, maybe it will and maybe it won't, but whoever is going to be caught between a mob on one side and a file of red coats on the other, it isn't going to be old Flashy.



Flashman, p. 52, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

The poor folk were mutinous

All I gathered was that the poor folk were mutinous and wanted to do less work for more money, and the factory owners were damned if they'd let them. There may have been more to it than this, but I doubt it, and no one has ever convinced me that it was anything but a war between the two. It always has been, and always will be, as long as one man has what the other has not, and devil take the hindmost.




Flashman, p. 52, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Chartists, industrial relations.

Best things

The best things I found however, were the port, and the claret, in which the Scotch have a nice taste, although I never took to whisky.





Flashman, p. 51, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Scotland, whisky.

Solemn, hostile, and greedy

The men I found solemn, hostile, and greedy, and they found me insolent, arrogant, and smart.





Flashman, p. 51, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Scots.

Genteel boisterous things

The young women are mostly great, genteel boisterous things who are no doubt bedworthy enough if your taste runs that way. (One acquaintance of mine who had a Scotch clergyman's daughter described it as like wrestling with a sergeant of dragoons.)





Flashman, p. 51, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Scotswomen.

I disliked Scotland

I disliked Scotland and the Scots; the place I found wet and the people rude. They had fine qualities which bore me - thrift and industry and long-faced holiness.




Flashman, p. 51, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Scotland, Scots.

Laying down the law

I have soldiered in too many countries and known too many peoples to fall into the folly of laying down the law about any of them.



Flashman, p. 51, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, soldiered, , ,

He was greedy

But he was greedy, and I've lived long enough to discover that there isn't any folly a man won't contemplate if there's money or a woman at stake.



Flashman, p. 49, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Other Related Topics:
Flashman, greedy, folly.

Such is fame

So that morning's work made a name for Harry Flashman - a name that enjoyed more immediate celebrity than if I had stormed a battery alone. Such is fame, especially in peacetime."



Flashman, p. 48, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, celebrity, fame, name.