Aldershot on a pension

“Theodore’ll have to die, somehow; can’t execute him, but can’t have him hanging around Aldershot on a pension, either. Public wouldn’t stand for it. He’ll just have to be done in on the quiet, accidental-looking.”
      “What hypocrites you are!”
      “No such thing. It’s just the civilised way of doing it, that’s all.”


Flashman on the March, pp.211-12, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.



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Stay, cruel despot!

Now, I don’t recite all these barbarities to shock or excite your pity, or to pose as one of those holy hypocrites who pretend to be in a great sweat about man’s inhumanity to man. I’ve seen too much of it, and know it happens whenever strong folk have absolute power over spiritless creatures. I merely tell you what I truly saw – as for my own view, well I’m all for keeping the peasants in order, and if hammering ’em does good, and makes life better for the rest of us, you won’t find me leaping between the tyrant and his victim crying ‘Stay, cruel despot!’…

Flashman at the Charge, p.146, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

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Coward, hypocrite, backslider

…if I hesitated, or argued, or did anything but accept at once they would rule me out immediately for a coward and a hypocrite and a backslider. And then it would be the Newgate hornpipe for Flashy, with the whole damn crew of Sons of the Volsungs hauling on the rope.

Royal Flash, p.202, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1978.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes,backslider.

A rotter still

Strange, but as the coach won clear and we rattled down the Mall, with the cheers dying behind us, I could hear Arnold’s voice saying. ‘There is good in you, Flashman,’ and I could imagine how he would suppose himself vindicated at this moment, and preach on ‘Courage’ in the chapel, and pretend to rejoice in the redeemed prodigal – but all the time he would know in his hypocrite heart that I was a rotter still.

Flashman, p.275, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes,Thomas Arnold, rotter.