Patrick O'Brian
Patrick O'Brian
Patrick O'Brian, CBE, born Richard Patrick Russ, was an English novelist and translator, best known for his Aubrey–Maturin series, a series of sea novels set in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars and centred on the friendship of English naval captain Jack Aubrey and the Irish–Catalan physician Stephen Maturin. The 20-novel series, the first of which is Master and Commander, is known for its well-researched and highly detailed portrayal of early 19th-century life, as well as its authentic and...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth12 December 1914
compulsion
Compulsion is the death of friendship.
horse writing thinking
When you're taking a fence on a horse, you don't think much; your body does all the thinking, and you're over or you're not over. It's much the same when you are doing a tricky thing with a pen. There are times when I'm writing very, very fast.
philosophy men blue
You are to consider that a certain melancholy and often a certain irascibility accompany advancing age: indeed it might be said that advancing age equals ill-temper. On reaching the middle years a man perceives that he is no longer able to do certain things, that what looks he may have had are deserting him, that he has a ponderous great belly, and that however much he may yet burn he is no longer attractive to women; and he rebels. Fortitude, resignation and philosophy are of more value than any pills, red, white or blue.
ideas unexpected wit
Wit is the unexpected copulation of ideas.
order people house
I am in favour of leaving people alone, however imperfect their polity may seem. It appears to me that you must not tell other nations how to set their house in order; nor must you compel them to be happy.
mouths understood
We understood one another better before ever I opened my mouth
systematic aspect existence
There is a systematic flocci-nauci-nihili-pilification of all other aspects of existence that angers me.
hands two differences
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!
drunk sloth
Jack, you've debauched my sloth.
moral figures proof
...for very strangely his officers looked upon Jack Aubrey as a moral figure, in spite of all proofs of the contrary...
hats drs moments
...looking angrily at the wombat: and a moment later, 'Come now, Stephen, this is coming it pretty high: your brute is eating my hat.' 'So he is, too,' said Dr. Maturin. 'But do not be perturbed, Jack; it will do him no harm, at all. His digestive processes--
tree movement branches
He sat on as the sun's rays came slowly down through the trees, lower and lower, and when the lowest reached a branch not far above him it caught a dewdrop poised upon a leaf. The drop instantly blazed crimson, and a slight movement of his head made it show all the colours of the spectrum with extraordinary purity, from a red almost too deep to be seen through all the others to the ultimate violet and back again.
lonely eye sight
It meant that Diana had not waited for any explanation, however halting and imperfect, but had condemned him unheard; and this showed a much harder, far less affectionate woman than the Diana he had known or had thought he knew - a mythical person, no doubt created by himself. It had of course been evident from her letter, which made no reference to his; but he had not chosen to see the evidence and now it was absolutely forced upon his sight it made his eyes sting and tingle again. And deprived of his myth he felt extraordinarily lonely.
unhappy lovers rejected
Stephen had spared no expense in making himself more unhappy, his own position as a rejected lover clearer.