Quotes from Blue at the Mizzen

“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, quote from Blue at the Mizzen

“No man born of woman has ever understood spoken Portuguese.”
― Patrick O'Brian, quote from Blue at the Mizzen

“Touch and away, Jack?’ asked Stephen. ‘Touch and away? Do you not recall that I have important business there? Enquiries of the very first interest?’

To do with our enterprise? To do with this voyage?’

Perhaps not quite directly.”
― Patrick O'Brian, quote from Blue at the Mizzen

“It’s all along of the unicorn’s horn – it’s all along of the glorious hand. Huzzay, three times huzzay for the doctor!’

Lord, how they cheered their surgeon! It was he who had brought the narwhal’s tusk aboard: and the severed hand, the Hand of Glory, was his property: both symbolized (and practically guaranteed) immense good fortune, virility, safety from poison or any disease you chose to name: and both had proved their worth.”
― Patrick O'Brian, quote from Blue at the Mizzen

“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, quote from Blue at the Mizzen

“Almost all voyages, from that of Noah’s Ark to the sending of the ships to Troy, have been marked by interminable delays, with false starts and turning wind and tide; perhaps the schooner Ringle was too slim and slight to count as a worthy adversary, because she gently sailed her anchor out of the ground and then bore away a little east of north with a wind that allowed her to spread every sail she possessed, other than those reserved for foul or very foul weather.”
― Patrick O'Brian, quote from Blue at the Mizzen

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Popular quotes

“Hey - Duggie! Duggie! Duggie!" He came running up to me, sparkler in hand. I felt like sticking one on him, the cheeky bastard. Nobody called me Duggie.
He held the sparkler up in front of my face and said, "Wait. Wait."
I was already waiting. What else was there to do?
"Here you are," he said. "Look! What's this?"
At that precise moment, his sparkler fizzled out. I didn't say anything, so he supplied the answer himself. "The death of the socialist dream," he said.
He giggled like a little maniac, and stared at me for a second or two before running off, and in that time I saw exactly the same thing I'd seen in Stubbs's eyes the day before. The same triumphalism, the same excitement, not because something new was being created, but because something was being destroyed. I thought about Phillip and his stupid rock symphony and I swear that my eyes pricked with tears. This ludicrous attempt to squeeze the history of the countless millennia into half an hour's worth of crappy riffs and chord changes suddenly seemed no more Quixotic than all the things my dad and his colleagues had been working towards for so long. A national health service, free to everyone who needed it. Redistribution of wealth through taxation. Equality of opportunity. Beautiful ideas, Dad, noble aspirations, just as there was the kernel of something beautiful in Philip's musical hodge-podge. But it was never going to happen. If there had ever been a time when it might have happened, that time was slipping away. The moment had passed. Goodbye to all that.
Easy to be clever with hindsight, I know, but I was right, wasn't I? Look back on that night from the perspective of now, the closing weeks of the closing century of our second millennium - if the calendar of some esoteric and fast-disappearing religious sect counts for anything any more - and you have to admit that I was right. And so was Benjamin's brother, the little bastard, with his sparkler and his horrible grin and that nasty gleam of incipient victory in his twelve-year-old eyes. Goodbye to all that, he was saying. He'd worked it out already. He knew what the future held in store.”
― Jonathan Coe, quote from The Rotters' Club

“It was a very bad idea. It was a terrible idea. It was the worst idea he had ever heard. It was irresistible.”
― Cassandra Clare, quote from The Runaway Queen

“We were tools in their toolbox, and when things go well they promote it. They inflate their roles.”
― quote from No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden

“That's all there is to it. We look different, so we don't understand each other's inner thoughts, but we cherish each other in our own way. I respect you.”
― Sun-mi Hwang, quote from The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly

“اعطتني القراءة عذرًا مقبولًا لعزلتي، بل ربما اعطت مغزىً لتلك العزلة المفروضة عليّ”
― Alberto Manguel, quote from A History of Reading

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.