I thank God daily for the good fortune of my birth, for I am certain I would have made a miserable peasant.
I formed a resolution to never write a word I did not want to write; to think only of my own tastes and ideals, without a thought of those of editors or publishers.
They were setting off on an adventure, and Hornblower was only too conscious that it was his own fault.
July 4th, 1776,” mused Keene, reading Hornblower’s date of birth to himself.
Harm began to come to Hornblower from that day forth, despite his obedience to orders and diligent study of his duties, and it stemmed from the arrival in the midshipmen’s berth of John Simpson as senior warrant officer.
Bush could never understand Hornblower’s disciplinary methods. He had been positively horrified when he had heard his captain’s public admission that he too had baths under the washdeck pump – it seemed madness for a captain to allow his men to guess that they were of the same flesh as his.
The stinks of the true believers have to be smelt to be believed.
Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.
Plain cowardice was far rarer than idiocy, just as plain courage was more common than nerve.
The most important objective was to drive the sub away from the convoy. To destroy the sub was an important objective but not the only one.
He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.
With two years of high school to his credit the boy had at least the educational requirements for his station. And only experience would tell if he had the others; if he would stand at his post amid dead and wounded, amid fire and destruction, and still pass on orders without tripping over a word.
It would never do for the captain to be lounging on his stool in the pilothouse while someone else buried the ship’s dead. The profoundest respect must be paid to the poor relics of the men who had given their lives for their country.
Krause found himself swaying on his feet again. This was quite absurd; he had been awake for less than forty-eight hours, and he had had two or even three hours of good sleep the night before last.
Order, counter order, disorder”; at more than one lecture at Annapolis he had heard that quotation, and during twenty years of service he had seen its truth demonstrated scores of times.
In an age of hard drinking Hornblower stood almost alone in his abstemiousness, from no conscientious motive but solely because he actively disliked the feeling of not having complete control of his judgment.
The British officer who had lectured on antisubmarine warfare at Casco Bay had been fond of quoting an army story of the previous war in which two infantry privates put their clothes through a newly invented machine for delousing them. “Why,” said one, bitterly, after inspecting results, “they’re all alive still.” “Yes,” said the other, “but I expect they’ve had a hell of a fright.
Krause knew academically that a human touch was desirable in these relationships even though he himself had never felt the need of it. He would be perfectly content to do and die in reply to a badly worded order from a superior and would feel no resentment at the absence of a polite phrase.
It was quite disgraceful that he had allowed sleep to creep up on him unawares. He had never had the experience before in his life. It was only thirty hours since he had been awakened in readiness for yesterday’s general quarters after two hours of perfectly sound sleep.
I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee.
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me, especially when I do not understand them.