“If anything she was a shade too plump, but she knew the ninety-seven ways of making love that the Hindus are supposed to set much store by―though mind you, it is all nonsense, for the seventy-fourth position turns out to be the same as the seventy-third, but with your fingers crossed.”
― George MacDonald Fraser, quote from Flashman
“I recognized the handwriting, and my heart gave a skip; when I opened it I got a turn, for it began, 'To my beloved Hector,' and I thought, by God she's cheating on me, and has sent me the wrong letter by mistake. But in the second line was a reference to Achilles, and another to Ajax, so I understood she was just addressing me in terms which she accounted fitting for a martial paladin; she knew no better. It was a common custom at that time, in the more romantic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the whore-mongering, drunken clowns most of them were. However, the Greek heroes were probably no better, so it was not far off the mark.”
― George MacDonald Fraser, quote from Flashman
“Now, look you here, Sekundar," says I, but he came up straight like a little bantam and cut me off.
"Sir Alexander. if you please," says he icily, as though I’d never seen him with his breeches down, chasing after some big Afghan bint.”
― George MacDonald Fraser, quote from Flashman
“This myth called bravery, which is half-panic, half-lunacy (in my case, all panic), pays for all; in England you can’t be a hero and bad. There’s practically a law against it.”
― George MacDonald Fraser, quote from Flashman
“We stood there for a full half hour, like so many scarecrows, while they jeered at us from a distance, and one or two of us were shot down.”
― George MacDonald Fraser, quote from Flashman
“But I still state unhesitatingly, that for pure, vacillating stupidity, for superb incompetence to command, for ignorance combined with bad judgment --in short, for the true talent for catastrophe -- Elphy Bey stood alone. Others abide our question, but Elphy outshines them all as the greatest military idiot of our own or any other day.
Only he could have permitted the First Afghan War and let it develop to such ruinous defeat. It was not easy: he started with a good army, a secure position, some excellent officers, a disorganized enemy, and repeated opportunities to save the situation. But Elphy, with the touch of true genius, swept aside these obstacles with unerring precision, and out of order wrought complete chaos. We shall not, with luck, look upon his like again.”
― George MacDonald Fraser, quote from Flashman
“You are a sorry creature, Flashman. I have failed in you. But even to you I must say, this is not the end. You cannot continue here, but you are young, Flashman, and there is time yet. Though your sins be as red as crimson, yet shall they be as white as snow. You have fallen very low, but you can be raised up again …”
― George MacDonald Fraser, quote from Flashman
“In her, ignorance and stupidity formed a perfect shield against the world: this, I suppose, is innocence. It”
― George MacDonald Fraser, quote from Flashman
George MacDonald Fraser
Born place: in Carlisle, The United Kingdom
Born date April 2, 1925
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“[T]he vanity of the contents” of individual experience is scrutable as an inessential trapping drawn into a matter by vested interests “…since it is at the same time the vanity of the self that knows itself to be vain”
― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, quote from Phenomenology of Spirit
“But let there be no misunderstanding: it is not that a real man, the object of knowledge, philosophical reflection or technological intervention, has been substituted for the soul, the illusion of theologians. The man described for us, whom we are invited to free, is already in himself the effect of a subjection more profound than himself. A 'soul' inhabits him and brings him to existence, which is itself a factor in the mastery that power exercises over the body. The soul is the effect and instrument of a political anatomy; the soul is the prison of the body.”
― Michel Foucault, quote from Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
“The uncertainty principle signaled an end to Laplace's dream of a theory of science, a model of the universe that would be completely deterministic. We certainly cannot predict future events exactly if we cannot even measure the present state of the universe precisely!
We could still imagine that there is a set of laws that determine events completely for some supernatural being who, unlike us, could observe the present state of the universe without disturbing it. However, such models of the universe are not of much interest to us ordinary mortals. It seems better to employ the principle of economy known as Occam's razor and cut out all the features of the theory that cannot be observed.”
― Stephen Hawking, quote from A Briefer History of Time
“Truth is dangerous. It topples palaces and kills kings. It stirs gentle men to rage and bids them take up arms. It wakes old grievances and opens forgotten wounds. It is the mother of the sleepless night and the hag-ridden day. And yet there is one thing that is more dangerous than Truth. Those who would silence Truth’s voice are more destructive by far.
It is most perilous to be a speaker of Truth. Sometimes one must choose to be silent, or be silenced. But if a truth cannot be spoken, it must at least be known. Even if you dare not speak truth to others, never lie to yourself.”
― Frances Hardinge, quote from Fly by Night
“You want to come to me. You know you have to come to me.Nothing can stop you. It is inevitable,like the tide. There can be no turning back.”
― Christine Feehan, quote from Dark Challenge
What's Left of Me
Evil and the Mask
Guitar Notes
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