Aubrey Maturin Quotes & Sayings

The wine must have done its job, because I am relaxed and finally at ease. Yes, it's definitely the wine. Otherwise I wouldn't have started singing out of the blue in a million years. — Hilaria Alexander

How much better a man feels when he is mixed with halibut and leg of mutton and roebuck — Patrick O'Brian

You can't take credit for talent; you can only take credit for using it. — Morgan Freeman

Come all you thoughtless young men,
a warning take by me
And never leave your happy homes
to sail the raging sea. — Patrick O'Brian

I've come to see institutional decline like a staged disease: harder to detect but easier to cure in the early stages, easier to detect but harder to cure in the later stages. An institution can look strong on the outside but already be sick on the inside, — James C. Collins

How dreadful it is that because of our wills we can never love anything without messing it around! We couldn't even love a tree, a stone even; for sooner or later we should be pruning the tree or chipping a bit off the stone. — Sylvia Townsend Warner

When I was 14 years old, I had the opportunity to meet Buddy Holly. I asked him how he got that big, powerful sound out of his guitar amp. He said, 'I blew a speaker and decided not to get it fixed.' — Robbie Robertson

Openness to human relationality does not mean revealing grand truths from the apse; it means meeting patients where they are, in the narthex or nave, and bringing them as far as you can. — Paul Kalanithi

To try and fail is at least to learn; to fail to try is to suffer the inestimable loss of what might have been. — Chester Barnard

Since the sheets were half-flown the sails instantly split at the seams, the maintopsail shaking so furiously that the masthead must have gone had not Mowett, the bosun, Bonden, Warley the captain of the maintop and three of his men gone aloft, laid out on the ice-coated yard and cut the sail away close to the reefs.
Warley was on the lee yardarm when the footrope gave way under him and he fell, plunging far clear of the side and instantly vanishing in the terrible sea. — Patrick O'Brian

What is faith? Faith is being grasped by the power of love. — William Sloane Coffin

Last but not least among serial killer methodologies, we have women who kill their own children. — Pat Brown

Well, nothing's a life or death struggle anymore, is it? The era of honor and sacrifice is over." I looked again at the O'Brian novels, lined up in order. "Jack Aubrey's full of human failings - so's Maturin - but they have principles, and they'd give their lives for them. Or for each other. Now it's all about money and status and celebrity. Not that people haven't always cared about those things, but it used to be considered venal, didn't it?" I shrugged. "It's like nobody bothers to grow up anymore. We just want to be kids all our lives. Collecting toys, having fun. — Beatriz Williams

A little after moonrise Stephen woke. Extreme hunger had brought on cramps in his midriff again and he held his breath to let them pass: Jack was still sitting there, the tiller under his knee, the sheet in his hand, as though he had never moved, as though he were as immoveable as the Rock of Gibraltar and as unaffected by hunger, thirst, fatigue, or despondency. In this light he even looked rock-like, the moon picking out the salient of his nose and jaw and turning his broad shoulders and upper man into one massive block. He had in fact lost almost as much weight as a man can lose and live, and in the day his shrunken, bearded face with deep-sunk eyes was barely recognizable; but the moon showed the man unchanged. — Patrick O'Brian

I sew his ears on from time to time, sure. — Patrick O'Brian

Every passive resistant movement has at some point been forced either to deny itself or repudiate the state. — Clarence Marsh Case

In terms of big spectacle, I thought 'Captain America 2' was phenomenal. I really loved that movie, and it was a great movie as a stand-alone. — Joe Carnahan

Everyone has brain
few have mind — Yarro Rai

Hope was a strange thing. Once it found its way into your heart, your soul, it was almost impossible to get it out. But — Jaymin Eve

That would be locking the horse after the stable door is gone, a very foolish thing to do. — Patrick O'Brian

Gluppit the prawling strangles, there! — Patrick O'Brian

Hollom was going forward along the larboard gangway: Nagel, an able seamen but one of the most sullen, bloody-minded and argumentative of the Defenders, was coming aft on the same narrow passage. They were abreast of one another; and Nagel walked straight on without the slightest acknowledgement other than a look of elaborate unconcern. — Patrick O'Brian

People tend to box little girls in. They teach them to sit properly and stand quietly and not attract attention. Sports is one place where girls can be free and enjoy the exhilaration of movement. — Tenley Albright

forces of nature. A man either ran for — Jayne Ann Krentz

It was an operation that Dr. Maturin had carried out at sea before, always in the fullest possible light and therefore on deck, and many of them had seen him do so.
Now they and all their mates saw him do it again: they saw Joe Plaice's scalp taken off, his skull bared, a disc of bone audibly sawn out, the handle turning solemnly; a three-shilling piece, hammered into a flattened dome by the armourer, screwed on over the hole; and the scalp replaced, neatly sewn up by the parson.
It was extremely gratifying - the Captain had been seen to go pale, and Barret Bonden too, the patient's cousin - blood running down Joe's neck regardless - brains clearly to be seen - something not to be missed for a mint of money - instructive, too - and they made the most of it. — Patrick O'Brian