Bernard Cornwell Quotes
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If he had learned one thing as a Soldier it was that any decision, even a bad one, was better than none.
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'The door is locked, Captain.' 'Then I'll break it down.' 'It is a shrine.' 'Then I'll say a prayer of forgiveness after I've knocked it down.'
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'But the implication of the psalm, is it not, is that we are sheep and that God is our shepherd? Why else would He put us in a pasture and protect us with a staff? But what I have never fully understood is why the shepherd blames the sheep when they become ill.'
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'I'll put a word in for you, Sharpe, because a man shouldn't be disciplined for killing the enemy, but I don't suppose my help will do you any good.'
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He had thought the army would pay for the voyage, but the army had refused, saying that Sharpe was accepting an invitation to join the 95th Rifles and if the 95th Rifles refused to pay his passage then damn them, damn their badly colored coats, and damn Sharpe. ... Britain had sent Sharpe to India, and Britain, Sharpe reckoned, should fetch him back.
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'The Irish are very largely Romish, Sharpe. Papists! We shall have to watch our theological discourse if we're not to unsettle their tempers! You and I might know that the pope is the reincarnation of the Scarlet Whore of Babylon, but it won't help our cause if we say it out loud. Know what I mean?'
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'The more I see of families ... the happier I am to be an orphan.'
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The Forlorn Hope was for the brave. It may have been a courage born of desperation, or foolhardiness, but it was courage just the same.
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I know nothing about producing TV drama and any involvement on my part is liable to prove an obstacle to the producers, so I prefer to be a cheerleader and let them get on with it.
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If you capture a ship, Sharpe, you keep the old name unless it's really obnoxious. Nelson took the Franklin at the Nile, an eighty gun thing of great beauty, but the navy will be damned if it has a ship named after a traitorous bloody Yankee so we call her the Canopus now.
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I'll happily mentor anyone who wants mentoring, and most of that goes on by internet rather than face to face.
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It seemed that if someone was lost in Copenhagen then the citizens regarded it as their duty to offer help.
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'What do you think?' 'Sir?' 'Frightening? Did you ever learn mathematics?' 'Yes, sir.' 'So add up how many Frenchmen can actually use their muskets.'
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This was the might of France, the pride of France, the tactic of the world's first conscript army, and this column, Clausel's counter-attack, ignored cold mathematical logic. It was not defeated by the line.
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Your friend Will is a good man, too,but I fear he's no longer an archer.' 'It would have been better, I sometimes think-' 'If he had died? Wish death on no man, Thomas, it comes soon enough without a wish.'
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'Made in Sheffield, and guaranteed never to fail! Good slicer this is, real good. You can cut a man in half with one of these if you get the stroke right.'
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One book at a time... though I'm usually doing the research for others while I'm writing, but that sort of research is fairly desultory and I like to stick to the book being written - and writing a book concentrates the mind so the research is more productive.
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Death was so channeled and directed by this staircase, yet Sharpe had learned that the steps a man feared most were the ones that had to be taken. He climbed.
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A Marshal of France is a fine fellow, second only to the Emperor, and he wore a dark blue uniform edged with golden leaves, and his collar and shoulders were heavy with gilt decorations. A Marshal of France was given privileges, riches, and honour, but they had to be earned by answering the difficult questions.
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'The Major's a grand big fellow, so he is.' 'So what are we? The damned?' 'We're that, sure enough, but we're also Riflemen, sir. You and me, we're the best God-damned Soldiers in the world.'
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Book tours and research provide a lot of travel - too much, I sometimes think, but we do take vacations.
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'Whoa there, lad! Whoa! Gentle now! Die well, die well.'
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'So I do my duty, and land in the shit.' 'You have at last seized the essence of soldiering.'
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Sharpe had been turbulent, ambitious, but one day, Hogan supposed, that restlessness would have found satisfaction. Then, curiously, Hogan found himself resenting Sharpe, resenting him because he had been killed and was thus denying his friendship to those who still lived.