Patrick O'connell Quotes & Sayings

Should I feel better if I were to vomit?' asked Jagiello. 'I doubt it,' said Stephen. 'It has done nothing for the Colonel. — Patrick O'Brian

Why there you are, Stephen,' cried Jack. 'You are come home, I find.'
That is true,' said Stephen with an affectionate look: he prized statements of this kind in Jack. — Patrick O'Brian

She is remarkably dry,' he said to Stephen who, preferring to die in the open, had crept up on deck, — Patrick O'Brian

I know of few men over 50 that seem to me entirely human, virtually none who has long exercised authority. — Patrick O'Brian

The prime minister of Ireland will be celebrating St. Patrick's Day at the White House. So finally the Secret Service agents will have a drinking buddy. — Conan O'Brien

It is unjust to provoke a man and then to complain he is a satyr if the provocation succeeds. You — Patrick O'Brian

He had been quite unprepared for this particular blow, striking under every conceivable kind of armour, and for some minutes he could hardly bear the pain, but sat there blinking in the sun. 'Christ,' he said at last. 'Another day. — Patrick O'Brian

They will not be pleased. But they know we must catch the monsoon with a well-found ship; and they know they are in the Navy
they have chosen their cake, and must lie on it.'
You mean, they cannot have their bed and eat it.'
No, no, it is not quite that either. I mean
I wish you would not confuse my mind, Stephen. — Patrick O'Brian

He reflected on his hitherto reflection that soldiers and sailors were, upon the whole, quite different creatures. 'And perhaps they are, too: yet perhaps drink, in very large quantities, may make the difference less evident. — Patrick O'Brian

After all a book can be represented as a conversation with one's demon. — Patrick O'Brian

Wondering just how Mr Church thought he had deserved anything short of impalement, Stephen walked into the cabin. — Patrick O'Brian

For Captain Aubrey, as for the rest of brute creation, there were only two kinds of birds, the edible and the inedible. — Patrick O'Brian

Oh, there you are. I was afraid you had gone off to your stoats again. The carrier has brought you an ape.' 'What sort of an ape?' asked Stephen. 'A damned ill-conditioned sort of an ape. — Patrick O'Brian

McIntyre's tale may have predecessors, but it is unique. I strain for literary comparisons and think: Kipling, the classical Chinese poets, early Patrick O'Brian, Hopkins. I search for a definition of its animating presence: the predator, the Buddhist sage, the hunter. All fall short. I stand before The Snow Leopard's Tale in awe and with a little envy. It is a gem, an uncanny evocation of the cold ancient dusty highlands of Central Asia, and could only have come from Tom McIntyre. It is his best. — Stephen J. Bodio

(he was a great believer in the healing powers of cheerfulness, if not of open mirth). Yet he had some faults, and one was a habit of dosing himself, generally from a spirit of enquiry, as in his period of inhaling large quantities of the nitrous oxide and of the vapour of hemp, to say nothing of tobacco, bhang in all its charming varieties in India, betel in Java and the neighbouring islands, qat in the Red Sea, and hallucinating cacti in South America, but sometimes for relief from distress, as when he became addicted to opium in one form or another; and now he was busily poisoning himself with coca-leaves, whose virtue he had learnt in Peru. — Patrick O'Brian

He that would make a pun would pick a pocket. — Patrick O'Brian

Authority is a solvent of humanity: look at any husband, any father of a family,and note the absorption of the person by the persona, the individual by the role. Then multiply the family, and the authority, by some hundreds and see the effect upon a sea-captain, to say nothing of an absolute monarch.Surely man in general is born to be oppressed or solitary, if he is to be fully human; unless it so happens that he is immune to the poison. — Patrick O'Brian

I am opposed to authority, that egg of misery and oppression; I am opposed to it largely for what it does to those who exercise it. — Patrick O'Brian

The nymphs in green? Delightful girls.' 'It is clear you have been a great while at sea, to call those sandy-haired coarse-featured pimply short-necked thick-fingered vulgar-minded lubricious blockheads by such a name. Nymphs, forsooth. If they were nymphs, they must have had their being in a tolerably rank and stagnant pool: the wench on my left had an ill breath, and turning for relief I found her sister had a worse; and the upper garment of neither was free from reproach. Worse lay below, I make no doubt. — Patrick O'Brian

You must speak the truth and you must speak it now, Conor O'Malley. Say it. You must.
Conor shook his head again, his mouth clamped shut tight, but he could feel a burning in his chest, like a fire someone had lit there, a miniature sun, blazing away and burning him from the inside.
"It'll kill me if I do," he gasped.
It will kill you if you do not, the monster said. You must say it. — Patrick Ness

Patrick Kavanagh put it, preparing for life rather than living it. — John O'Donohue

One lives in the very present moment; lives intently. There is no urge to be doing: being is the highest good. — Patrick O'Brian

They were looking after themselves, living with rigid economy; and there was no greater proof of their friendship than the way their harmony withstood their very grave differences in domestic behaviour. In Jack's opinion Stephen was little better than a slut: his papers, odd bits of dry, garlic'd bread, his razors and small-clothes lay on and about his private table in a miserable squalor; and from the appearance of the grizzled wig that was now acting as a tea-cosy for his milk-saucepan, it was clear that he had breakfasted on marmalade.
Jack took off his coat, covered his waistcoat and breeches with an apron, and carried the dishes into the scullery. 'My plate and saucer will serve again,' said Stephen. 'I have blown upon them. I do wish, Jack,' he cried, 'that you would leave that milk-saucepan alone. It is perfectly clean. What more sanitary, what more wholesome, than scalded milk? — Patrick O'Brian

But the world is round,' said Peter. 'It is not,' said Sean. 'How can you say such a wicked thing? Fie.' 'But it is,' cried Peter, 'and if we go on, we shall come back to where we began.' 'Of course we shall,' replied Sean, 'but that is because it is shaped like a cheese. You may go round, as Loegaire did: but you may not go up or down for ever, or you will fall off the ends, as Maire nic Phiarais did and we ourselves almost when we went too far south of the Horn. The whole world knows that. — Patrick O'Brian

They were poor thin little undernourished creatures with only a few blue teeth among them, though young: they had been taken up for combining with others to ask for higher wages and sentenced to transportation; but as they were somewhat less criminal than those who had actually made the demand they were allowed to join the Navy instead. — Patrick O'Brian

For you must know, gentlemen, that when the mariner is dosed, he likes to know that he has been dosed: with fifteen grains or even less of this valuable substance scenting him and the very air about him there can be no doubt of the matter; and such is the nature of the human mind that he experiences a far greater real benefit than the drug itself would provide, were it deprived of its stench. — Patrick O'Brian

History is an amazing presence
it is the place where vanished time gathers. While we are in the flow of time, it is difficult to glean its significance, and it is only in looking back that we can recognize the hidden dimensions at work within a particular era or epoch. — John O'Donohue

(Officially the earliest age was eleven for officers' sons and thirteen for the rest, but no one took much notice of the regulation - seven-year-olds were not unknown.) Before — Patrick O'Brian

Rested, shaved, coffee'd, steaked, you will be a different man. — Patrick O'Brian

Stephen had spared no expense in making himself more unhappy, his own position as a rejected lover clearer. — Patrick O'Brian

Life is a banquet and most poor s.o.b.'s are starving to death. Auntie Mame — Patrick Dennis

It is not what I want from you, Conor O'Malley, it said. It is what you want from me.
"I don't want anything from you," Conor said.
Not yet, said the monster. But you will. — Patrick Ness

You do not mean there is danger of peace?, cried Jack. — Patrick O'Brian

If I no longer love Diana,' he wrote, 'what shall I do?' What could he do, with his mainspring, his prime mover gone? He had known that he would love her for ever - to the last syllable of recorded time. He had not sworn it, any more than he had sworn that the sun would rise every morning: it was too certain, too evident: no one swears that he will continue to breathe nor that twice two is four. Indeed, in such a case an oath would imply the possibility of doubt. Yet now it seemed that perpetuity meant eight years, nine months and some odd days, while the last syllable of recorded time was Wednesday, the seventeenth of May. — Patrick O'Brian

Oh, as far as unsexing is concerned, who are we to throw stones? With us any girl that cannot find a husband is unsexed. If she is very high or very low she may go her own way, with the risks entailed therein, but otherwise she must either have no sex or he disgraced. She burns, and she is ridiculed for burning. To say nothing of male tyranny - a wife or a daughter being a mere chattel in most codes of law or custom - and brute force - to say nothing to that, hundreds of thousands of girls are in effect unsexed every generation: and barren women are as much despised as eunuchs. I do assure you, Martin, that if I were a woman I should march out with a flaming torch and a sword; I should emasculate right and left. As for the women of the pahi, I am astonished at their moderation. — Patrick O'Brian

No man born of woman has ever understood spoken Portuguese. — Patrick O'Brian

Well, damme, William, I am sorry: I am very sorry, indeed I am. But injustice is a rule of the service, as you know very well; and since you have to have a good deal of undeserved abuse, you might just as well have it from your friends. — Patrick O'Brian

If I were a woman I should march out with a flaming torch and a sword; I should emasculate right and left. — Patrick O'Brian

But you know as well as I, patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile. — Patrick O'Brian

I do not like to sound discontented neither,' said Pullings, 'nor to crab any ship I belong to; but between you and me, Doctor, between you and me, she is more what we call a floating coffin than a ship. — Patrick O'Brian

Where there was no equality there was no companionship: when a man was obliged to say 'Yes, sir,' his agreement was of no worth even if it happened to be true. — Patrick O'Brian

Wit is the unexpected copulation of ideas. — Patrick O'Brian

But what is a dream, Conor O'Malley? the monster said, bending down so it's face was close to Conor's. Who is to say that it is not everything else that is the dream? — Patrick Ness

Likings arise when one has no earthly reason for liking - the most wildly improbable marriages and uncommon friendship. — Patrick O'Brian

In my case, I write in the past because I'm not really part of the present. I have nothing valid to say about anything current, though I have something to say about what existed then. — Patrick O'Brian

But it did not much care for hunting, and then like so many geldings it spent much of its time mourning for its lost stones: a discontented horse. — Patrick O'Brian

I regret that some on the extreme right have been so critical of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and have adamantly opposed the naming of a successor who shares her judicial philosophy and qualities. And their criticism actually reflects poorly upon them. — Patrick Leahy

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

I wonder, James, whether it is not too easy for a rich man to despise money — Patrick O'Brian

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor serves as a model Supreme Court justice, widely recognized as a jurist with practical values, a sense of the consequences of the legal decisions being made by the Supreme Court. — Patrick Leahy

Surely man in general is born to be oppressed or solitary, if he is to be fully human; — Patrick O'Brian

Jack, I must tell you in your private ear that we have some allies ashore, rather curious allies, I admit, who look after these operations: I hope and trust that you will see many another yard burnt or burning before we reach Durazzo. I am aware that this is not your kind of war, brother: it is not glorious. Yet as you see, it is effective.' 'Do not take me for a bloody-minded man, Stephen, a death-or-glory swashbuckling cove. Believe me, I had rather see a first-rate burnt to the water-line than a ship's boy killed or mutilated. — Patrick O'Brian

Hatred the only moving force, a petulant unhappy striving - childhood the only happiness, and that unknowing; then the continual battle that cannot ever possibly be won; a losing fight against ill-health - poverty for nearly all. Life is a long disease with only one termination and its last years are appalling: weak, racked by the stone, rheumatismal pains, senses going, friends, family, occupation gone, a man must pray for imbecility or a heart of stone. All under sentence of death, often ignominious,frequently agonizing: and then the unspeakable levity with which the faint chance of happiness is thrown away for some jealousy, tiff, sullenness, private vanity, mistaken sense of honour, that deadly, weak and silly notion. — Patrick O'Brian

There are some midshipmen who will never have the decency to lie down and die, whatever the circumstances. Because they are born to be hanged, no doubt,' added the lieutenant darkly. — Patrick O'Brian

Oh, what is that bird?'
'It is a wheatear. We have seen between two and three hundred since we set out, and I have told you their name twice, nay, three times. — Patrick O'Brian

Two weevils crept from the crumbs. 'You see those weevils, Stephen?' said Jack solemnly.
I do.'
Which would you choose?'
There is not a scrap of difference. Arcades ambo. They are the same species of curculio, and there is nothing to choose between them.'
But suppose you had to choose?'
Then I should choose the right-hand weevil; it has a perceptible advantage in both length and breadth.'
There I have you,' cried Jack. 'You are bit - you are completely dished. Don't you know that in the Navy you must always choose the lesser of two weevils? Oh ha, ha, ha, ha! — Patrick O'Brian

Take a newspaper account of Waterloo or Trafalgar, with all the small advertisements: it seems much more real than reading about it in a history book. — Patrick O'Brian

Jack, you have debauched my sloth. — Patrick O'Brian

The same tantalizing guile and sublime skill ... [The series is] reinforced in its claim to be one of the major literary works of this century ... Only two other writers that this reviewer can think of have each created an entire, discrete and compelling world, a totally believable entity which one might wish to inhabit, and they are Joyce and Proust. It is not pretentious to place Patrick O'Brian in the first canon of literature ... — Kevin Myers

He cannot hold his wine; he has no head for it. Why, on no more than three glasses, for I absolutely poured him out no more, he was on the point of singing Yankee Doodle. Yankee Doodle, in a King's ship, upon my sacred honour! — Patrick O'Brian

What is a potto?"
"It is a little furry creature that sleeps all day with its head between its legs and then walks about very, very slowly all night, high in the trees, slowly eating leaves and creeping up on birds as they roost and eating them too. — Patrick O'Brian

With one hundred miles left to go in the Klondike 200 I began imagining how amazed people would be at the finished line. Entering the Klondike, my sights had been set on merely finishing. — Brian Patrick O'Donoghue

The author says that when an angry impulse is not immediately expressed, it turns to melancholy. — Patrick O'Brian

Jack, you've debauched my sloth. — Patrick O'Brian

I am everything untamed and untameable! It brought Conor up close to its eye. I am this wild earth, come for you, Conor O'Malley. — Patrick Ness

When I look at Africa many questions come to mind, many times I have asked myself what would happen if Dr Kwame Nkrumah and Patrice Lumumba were to rise up and see what is happening, many times I have asked myself what would happen if Nelson Madiba Mandela were to rise up and see what is happening, because what they will be confronted with is an Africa where the Democratic Republic of Congo is unsettled, there is a war going on there, but it's not on the front pages of our newspapers because we don't even control our newspapers and the media. — Patrick L.O. Lumumba

That Canadian team had a bunch of guys who are in the 1 percent: Crosby, Getzlaf, Perry, Carter, Richards and Weber - guys who would win Olympic gold and make $8 and $10 million a season down the line. Though a player might be in that 1 percent, no team is, not as a group. — Patrick O'Sullivan

Who am I? the monster repeated, still roaring. I am the spine that the mountains hang upon! I am the tears that the rivers cry! I am the lungs that breathe the wind! I am the wolf that kills the stag, the hawk that kills the mouse, the spider that kills the fly! I am the stag, the mouse and the fly that are eaten! I am the snake of the world devouring its tail! I am everything untamed and untameable! It brought Conor up close to its eye. I am thils wild earth, come for you, Conor O'Malley.
"You look like a tree," Conor said. — Patrick Ness

Oh, the odious wench.How I wish I were rid of her. I have always loathed women, from clew to earring; hook, line and sinker; root and branch.I always said this would happen, you remember; I was against it from the start. Damn it for a flibbertigibbet, the hussy. — Patrick O'Brian

Her [Jurdge Sandra Day O'Connor] judgment has also been critical in protecting our environmental rights. She joined in 5-4 majorities affirming reproductive freedom and religious freedom and the Voting Rights Act. — Patrick Leahy

Third World is a state of the mind and until we change our attitude as Africans, if there is a fourth, fifth and even sixth world, we will be in it. — Patrick L.O. Lumumba

The back of my hand to guilt. — Patrick O'Brian

I love you, O'Reilly. When are you going to get that through your thick Aussie skull?"
He laughed softly, and she tilted back her head to look up at him wonderingly, "What's so funny?"
He put his hands on her shoulders and rubbed the tight muscles of her neck. "Do you realize you've never used my first name?" he said. "It's Patrick, you know."
He watched her lips curl into a smile that made his chest ache. "You've always been O'Reilly to me."
"Huh," he grunted. "Except when you're mad. Then I become Mister O'Reilly. — Candice Proctor

Go and see whether the Doctor is about,' said Jack, 'and if he is, ask him to look in, when he has a moment.'
Which he is in the fish-market, turning over some old-fashioned lobsters. No. I tell a lie. That is him, falling down the companion-way and cursing in foreign. — Patrick O'Brian

What's wrong with (Captain) Jack Aubrey?"
"Everything, since he has a command and I have not. — Patrick O'Brian

For very strangely his officers looked upon Jack Aubrey as a moral figure, in spite of all proofs of the contrary ... — Patrick O'Brian

Good only for destruction - has destroyed all that was valuable in the monarchy - is destroying France with daemonic energy - this tawdry, theatrical empire - a deeply vulgar man - nothing French about him - insane ambition - the whole world one squalid tyranny. His infamous treatment of the Pope! — Patrick O'Brian

You are the one who called me, Conor O'Malley, it said, looking at him seriously. You are the one with the answers to these questions. — Patrick Ness

I've never set out to seduce my reader. I don't see him at all clearly. — Patrick O'Brian

I have never yet known a man admit that he was either rich or asleep. — Patrick O'Brian

Virtue should always be colmingled with humor. — Patrick O'Brian

Some things are just the blink of eternity's eye while others last forever. — Patrick O'Scheen

As it usually happened after an engagement, a heavy sadness was coming down over his spirits. To some degree it was the prodigious contrastbetween two modes of life: in violent hand-to-hand fighting threr was no room for time, reflexion, enmity or even pain unless it was disabling; everything moved with extreme speed, cut and parry with a reflex as fast as a sword-thrust, eyes automatically keeping watch on three or four men within reach, arm lunging at the first hint of a lowered guard, a cry to warn a friend, a roar to put an enemy off his stroke; and all this in an extraordinarily vivid state of mind, a kind of fierce exaltation, an intense living in the most immediate present. — Patrick O'Brian

There is a systematic flocci-nauci-nihili-pilification of all other aspects of existence that angers me. — Patrick O'Brian

What was independence but a word? What did any form of government matter? Freedom: to do what? — Patrick O'Brian

It's simply this:
the Irish kiss,
a snog o' bliss,
be blessed luck
from any miss. — Richelle E. Goodrich

But, however, I clapped a stopper over his capers.' Dr Maturin was proud of his nautical expressions: sometimes he got them right, but right or wrong he always brought them out with a slight emphasis of satisfaction, much as others might utter a particularly apt Greek or Latin quotation. 'And brought him up with a round stern,' he added. — Patrick O'Brian

Clap on with both hands, sir - never say die - one more heave and we're home, safe and dry. — Patrick O'Brian

From a misanthrope Bacchus makes me sociable ... Yet on the other hand I had already bowed and smiled; I had performed at least the motions of complaisancy; and how often have I not observed that the imitation begets the reality. — Patrick O'Brian

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

You are a reasonably civil, complaisant creature on dry land,' said Stephen, 'but the moment you are afloat you become pragmatical and absolute, a bashaw - do this, do that, gluppit the prawling strangles, there - no longer a social being at all. It is no doubt the effect of the long-continued habit of command; but it cannot be considered amiable. — Patrick O'Brian

We understood one another better before ever I opened my mouth — Patrick O'Brian

Whereas I had not meant anything so illiberal as a national reflexion, of course; only that I hated Papists. — Patrick O'Brian

This short watch that is about to come, or rather these two short watches
why are they called dog watches? Where, heu, heu, is the canine connection?'
Why,' said Stephen, 'it is because they are curtailed of course. — Patrick O'Brian

I very much dislike being interviewed by the kind of journalist who tries to dig into your private life. — Patrick O'Brian

Come athwart my hawse and I shall ride you down, you half-baked son of an Egyptian fart,' to a wool-gathering jolly-boat; and art echoed from either shore. — Patrick O'Brian

About my books, that's all that I think the public has, in its normal way, to know. My private life is, by definition, private. — Patrick O'Brian

Here is the hardest hit of all, O'Malley," Harry said. "Here is the very worst thing I can do to you."
He held out his hand, as if asking for a handshake.
He was asking for a handshake.
Conor responded almost automatically, putting out his own hand and shaking Harry's before he even thought about what he was doing. They shook hands like two businessmen at the end of a meeting.
"Goodbye, O'Malley," Harry said, looking into Conor's eyes. "I no longer see you. — Patrick Ness

aboard ship, and then hard tack, salt-horse, — Patrick O'Brian

The lookout that first sights the cat shall have ten guineas and remission of sins, short of mutiny, sodomy, or damaging the paintwork. — Patrick O'Brian