194 Quotes by Patrick O'Brian

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!

One of the miseries of medical life is that on the one hand you know what shocking things can happen to the human body and on the other you know how very little we can really do about most of them.

I would not cross this room to reform parliament or prevent the union or to bring about the millennium... – but man as part of a movement or a crowd is... inhuman... the only feelings I have are for men as individuals; my loyalties, such as they may be, are to private persons alone... 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.

Of course I do know it is the French who are so wicked; but there are all these people who keep coming and going – the Austrians, the Spaniards, the Russians. Pray, are the Russians good now? It would be very shocking – treason no doubt – to put the wrong people in my prayers.

I wonder, James, whether it is not too easy for a rich man to despise money.