Implacable zeal

…always the same concentration, the same implacable zeal for perfection. No wonder she became mistress of all China — or that the Emperor died of her mattress gymnastics. Ten years? It’s a marvel he lasted ten days.


Flashman and the Dragon, pp.238-39, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



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Unbridled appetite

     Perhaps, on consideration, I’m wrong to call her a monster — unless it’s monsterous to indulge an unbridled appetite without regard for anyone or anything. Yes, I think that’s right: I do, and I’m a monster.

Flashman and the Dragon, p.238, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



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The Australian Ideal

      She fulfilled, you see, four of the five conditions necessary for what may be called the Australian Ideal — she was an immensely rich, stunningly beautiful, highly-skilled professional amorist with the sexual appetite of a pagan princess; she did not own a public house.

Flashman and the Dragon, p.231, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



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Idol thoughts

She would have made a stone idol squeal.



Flashman and the Dragon, p.212, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.


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Pound and a ticket

      The fact remained that he hadn’t told ’em to give Flashy a pound from the till and a ticket to Tooting…


Flashman and the Dragon, p.206, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



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Speak civil

...I had to crawl the whole damned way, dragging those beastly irons, and staring at the reflection of the naked, bearded wretch in the glassy floor beneath me. Hollo, Flashy, old son, I thought, bellows to mend again, my boy, but you keep going and speak civil to the gentleman and you'll get a sugar plum at tea.


Flashman and the Dragon, p.204, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



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Will to endure

… I understand how martyrs bear their tortures: they may have faith, and hope, and all the rest of it, but greater than these is blind, unquenchable red anger. It sustained me, I know — the will to endure and survive and make those ice-faced bitches howl for mercy.

Flashman and the Dragon, p.197, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



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Got by many actions

…who steals my purse may get away with it, but he who filches from me my good name will surely find his tits in the wringer.




Flashman and the Dragon, p.186, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



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Snug and helpless

And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, which young military men should bear in mind, it’s that the foeman is generally as glad to accept your surrender as you are to give it. Mind you, he may turn spiteful later, when he’s got you snug and helpless (I often do), but that’s a risk you must run, you know.

Flashman and the Dragon, p.186, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.




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A well-decorated hero

      For a well-decorated hero I’ve done a deal of surrendering in my time — which is doubtless why I remain a well-decorated hero.



Flashman and the Dragon, p.186, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.




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Chinese proverb

Be patient, and at last the mulberry leaf will become a silk robe.



Flashman and the Dragon, p.172, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



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Doctor Thorne, I presume

Elgin himself looked ten years younger, now that he’d cast the die, but I thought exuberance had got the better of him when he strode into the saloon later, threw The Origin of Species on the table and announced:
      “It’s very original, no doubt, but not for a hot evening. What I need is some trollop.”
      I couldn’t believe my ears, and him a church-goer, too. “Well, my lord, I dunno,” says I. “Tientsin ain’t much of a place, but I’ll see what I can drum up —”
      “Michel’s been reading Doctor Thorne since Taku,” cried he. “He must have finished it by now, surely! Ask him, Flashman, will you?” So I did, and had my ignorance, enlightened.


Flashman and the Dragon, p.170, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



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Rolling up the Peiho

Fifteen thousand horse, foot and guns rolling up the Peiho, not to fight or hold or to conquer, but just so that the Big Barbarian could stand before the Son of Heaven and watch him put his mark on paper. “And when he does,” says Elgin, “the ends of the earth will have met at last, and there will be no more savage kings for our people to subdue. We’ve come a long way from our northern forests; I wonder if we were wise.”


Flashman and the Dragon, p.168, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



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Elgin's fads

      “Synonymous be damned!” snaps Elgin. “H.M.G will not be drawn into war against the Taipings. We’d find ourselves with a new empire in China before we knew it.” He heaved up from the table and poured coffee from a spirit kettle. “And I have no intention, Parkes, of presiding over any extension of the area in which we exhibit the hollowness of our Christianity and our civilization. Coffee, Flashman? Yes, you can light one of your damned cheroots if you want to—but blow the smoke the other way. Poisoning mankind!”
      There you have three of Elgin’s fads all together — he hated tobacco, was soft on Asiatics, and didn’t care for empire-building. I recall him on this very campaign saying he’d do anything “to prevent England calling down God’s curse on herself for brutalities committed on yet another feeble Oriental race.” Yet he did more to fix and maintain the course of the British empire than any man of his day, and is remembered for the supreme atrocity. Ironic, ain’t it?


Flashman and the Dragon, pp.163-4, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



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Hard as a hammer

. . .he listened with his bare forearms set on the table, John Bull to the life; he’d be fifty years then, the Big Barbarian, as the Chinese called him, bald as an egg save for a few little white wisps, with his bulldog lip and sudden barks of anger or laughter. A peppery old buffer, and a deal kinder than he looked — how many ambassadors would call on a colonel’s wife to carry a letter to her man? — and the shrewdest diplomat of his day, hard as a hammer and subtle as a Spaniard. Best of all he had common sense.


Flashman and the Dragon, p.162, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



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First into the breach

      “Frogs just a damned nuisance, of course — no proprer provision, an’ thre days late,” says he with satisfaction. “How the blazes Bonaparte ever got ’em on parade beats me. We should go without ’em.”       Everyone says that about the French, and it’s gospel true — until it’s Rosalie’s breakfast time*, and then Froggy’ll be first into the breach ahead of us, just out of spite.


*Time for action. Rosalie was the long French sword-bayonet.


Flashman and the Dragon, p.160, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



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A shared enemy

…Royals in their shirt-sleeves mingling with the Tirailleurs to swap baccy and gossip (it’s damned sinister, if you ask me, how the Jocks and Frogs always drift together)…

Flashman and the Dragon, p.160, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



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Tossing oranges

…a line of Probyn’s riders, Sikhs and Afghans in shirt-sleeves, taking turns to ride full tilt past an officer who was tossing oranges in the air — they were taking ’em with their sabres on the fly, roars of applause greeting each successful cut.
      “Fane’s boys will be doing it with grapes tomorrow, I expect,” says Probyn.



Flashman and the Dragon, p.157, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.


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The great rule of headquarters

Two staff infants were within, Addiscombe all over ’em.
      “Hollo, my sons!” cries I cheerily, with my head splitting. “I’m Flashman. Not a bit of it, sit down, sit down! Don’t tell me you haven’t learned the great headquarters rule yet!”
      “They looked at each other, blushing and respectful in the presence of the celebrated beau sabreur. “No sir,” says one, nervously. “What’s that?”
      “Hark’ee, my boy. If bread is the staff of life, what is the life of staff?”
      “Dunno, sir,” says he, grinning.
      “One long loaf,” says I, winking. “So take your ease, and tell me where’s Sir Hope Grant


Flashman and the Dragon, p.157, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



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Informally attired

Within ten minutes I’d replaced my soiled garments with a fine tussore coat, coolie pants, solar helmet, and umbrella, with a handsome morocco toilet case in my back pocket — and if you think that outlandish, let me tell you that armies were a deal more informally attired in my day. Campbell at Lucknow looked like a bus conductor, and old Raglan in the Crimea appeared to have robbed a jumble sale.

Flashman and the Dragon, p.157, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



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Two little words

      Well, I always say, credit and cash, you can never have too much of either...



Flashman and the Dragon, p.145, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



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The wages of ambition

      I watched his sedan jogging away across the plain in the wake of his tatterdemalion regiment, and thought, well, there’s another damned fool gone to collect the wages of ambition. I was right — and wrong. He found his bed in the paddy, as I’d foretold, and hardly anyone remembers even his name nowadays, but you may say without him Chinese Gordon might never have had a look-in.

Flashman and the Dragon, p.143, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



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You say you want a revolution

      “You imagine I act out of unscrupulous self-interest; true, all revolutionaries do. They agitate and harangue and justify every villainy in the name of high ideals; they lie, to delude the people, whom they hold in contempt. They seek nothing but their personal ends…”

Flashman and the Dragon, p.134, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.




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Unwelcome news

If there’s one thing that can make me puke with terror, it’s having an Oriental despot tell me I’m inconvenient.



Flashman and the Dragon, p.130, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



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Furtive looks

…when great men wax confidential I find myself taking furtive looks over my shoulder. I just had to think of Palmerston.


Flashman and the Dragon, p.130, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



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Genteel soldiering

“Nothing can withstand the might of the Tien-Wang,” says Lee, and I thought, God help Shanghai. I realized then that my soldiering had been of the genteel, polite variety — well-mannered actions like Cawnpore and Balaclava and the Kabul retreat in which the occasional prisoner was taken. In China, the idea is to kill everything that stirs and burn everything that don’t. Just that.


Flashman and the Dragon, p.125, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



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I don't preach

      Don’t mistake me; I don’t preach. You know my morals and ideals, and you won’t find the Archbishop shopping for ’em in a hurry. But I know right from wrong, as perhaps only a scoundrel can . . .



Flashman and the Dragon, p.124, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, morals.

Lady-in-waiting

      I stared at the officer.  “She left this . . . for me?  Did she say why?”
      He shook his head, bored.  “She told me to give it to the big fan-qui. Nothing more.”
      “But she said she was going to wait!”
      “Oh, aye.” He stopped in the act of lounging off.  “She told me to say . . . that she would always be waiting.”  He shrugged. “Whatever that may mean.”


Flashman and the Dragon, p.96, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



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Flashman and the art of Chinese calligraphy

. . . a little chap was waiting with a bag of silver and a scroll, which I was invited to sign with a paint-brush. When in Rome . . . I painted him a small cat sitting on a wall, he beamed and I strode out to the cart . . .


Flashman and the Dragon, p.95, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



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Treason doth never prosper

Perhaps she should recall the saying of an English poet, that treason cannot prosper because with prosperity it ceases to be treason.




Flashman and the Dragon, p.93, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



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