Patrick O’Brian: The Surgeon’s Mate (1980) – Quotes

The Surgeon’s Mate is the seventh book in the Aubrey-Maturin series.
Stephen reflects on the reality of coincidence in the world:
This was not a welcome subject, and the light, the fine glow died out of Diana’s face, which had been alive with the happiness of freedom recovered, the excitement of Paris regained and of new clothes. [...]

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Patrick O’Brian: The Fortune of War (1979) – Quotes

The Fortune of War is the sixth book in the Aubrey-Maturin series:
Director Peter Weir used this joke in the film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World:
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 [...]

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Patrick O’Brian: Desolation Island (1978) – Quotes

Desolation Island is the fifth book in the Aubrey-Maturin series:
Is there a better description of Stephen and Jack’s friendship through music?
‘Killick! Killick, there! Bear a hand.’
Kilick’s voice could be heard coming nearer: “No peace, no bleeding peace in this barky,’ and as the door opened, ‘Sir?’
‘Toasted cheese for the Doctor, half a dozen muttonchops for [...]

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Patrick O’Brian: The Mauritius Comand (1977) – Quotes

The Mauritius Command is the fourth book in the Aubrey-Maturin series.
Jack reflects on his disappointment with marriage:
…[Stephen] said, ‘Were we to speak generally, we might say that upon the whole sailors, after many years of their unnatural, cloistered life, tend to regard the land as Fiddlers Green, a perpetual holiday; and that their expectations cannot [...]

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Patrick O’Brian: HMS Surprise (1973) – Quotes

H.M.S. Surprise is the third book in the Aubrey-Maturin series.
Stephen reflects on his introverted nature, his inclination toward not truly knowing those around him:
How remote it seemed, that quarterdeck, crowded with blue coats, red coats and half a dozen black, with the busy check-shirted seamen moving among them: no great distance vertically – fifty feet [...]

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Feeding the Lake – Madeleine L’Engle

If the work comes to the artist and says, “Here I am, serve me,” then the job of the artist, great or small, is to serve. The amount of the artist’s talent is not what it is about. Jean Rhys said to an interviewer in the Paris Review, “Listen to me. All of writing is [...]

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Patrick O’Brian: Post Captain (1972) – Quotes

The second book in the Aubrey-Maturin series.
A quote demonstrating their differences in standards of cleanliness:
At present they were lodging in an idyllic cottage near the Heath with green shutters and honeysuckle over the door – idyllic in summer, that is to say. They were looking after themselves, living with rigid economy; and there was no [...]

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G.K. Chesterton on Priests & Poets

“I don’t deny that there should be priests to remind men that they will one day die. I only say that at certain strange epochs it is necessary to have another kind of priests, called poets, actually to remind men that they are not dead yet.”
~In G.K. Chesterton’s Manalive

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Patrick O’Brian: Master and Commander (1970) – Quotes

The first in Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey Maturin series.
This is a most unlikely beginning to the life-long friendship between Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin:
The music-room in the Governor’s House at Port Mahon, a tall handsome, pillared octagon, was filled with the triumphant first movement of Locatelli’s C major quartet. The players, Italians pinned against the far [...]

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Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series

It would be hard to over emphasize my love of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin novels about a fighting sea captain, Jack Aubrey, and his naval surgeon and ‘particular friend’ Stephen Maturin. Their friendship and adventures spread over twenty novels and not a few years during the Napoleonic wars and beyond. O’Brian’s novels were certainly lauded when [...]

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