Bernard Cornwell quotes - page 7

He had been a tough, cheerful youngster, the sort who collected birds' eggs, scrapped with other boys and climbed the church tower on a dare, and now he was a tough cheerful young man who thought that being an officer in Lawford's regiment was just about the finest thing life could afford. He liked soldiering and he liked soldiers. (Bernard Cornwell)
There's a great bloody mine, sir! Just waiting to kill our lads! I ain't letting that happen. You can do what you bloody well like, but I'm going to kill some more of these bastards. View quote
Bernard Cornwell
I do not approve of you, Thomas, and I do not approve of your woman, but nor can I approve of a Church that uses pain to bring the love of God to a sinful world. Evil begets evil, it spreads like a weed, but good works are tender shoots that need husbandry. View quote
Bernard Cornwell
I think the Holy Grail is a dream that men have, a dream that the world can be made perfect. And if it existed, then we'd all know the dream can't come true. View quote
Bernard Cornwell
The Grail is like God. It is everywhere, all around us, obvious, but we refuse to see it. Men think they can only see God when they build a great church and fill it with gold and silver statues, but all they need do is look. The Grail exists, Thomas, you just need to open your eyes. View quote
Bernard Cornwell
Here, in this filthy stench of powder smoke, he felt at home. Other men learned how to plough fields or to shape wood, but Sharpe had learned how to use a musket or rifle, sword or bayonet, and how to turn an enemy's flank or assault a fortress. View quote
Bernard Cornwell
Take a man who has failed at everything, give him a final chance, show him trust, lead him to one success, and there is a sudden confidence that will lead to the next success. Soon they will believe they are unbeatable, and become unbeatable, but the trick was to have officers like Sharpe who kept on offering trust. Of course the Light Company missed him! He had expected great things of them and trusted them to win. View quote
Bernard Cornwell
If he had learned one thing as a Soldier it was that any decision, even a bad one, was better than none. View quote
Bernard Cornwell
... a newly raised unit of young men fresh from the depots of France, and they were half-trained, ill disciplined, resentful of an Emperor who had marched them off to a war they mostly did not understand and, above all, hungry. View quote
Bernard Cornwell
You know what the trick of a long life is, Sharpe? Stay out of range. View quote
Bernard Cornwell
There are rules, orders, regulations, Sharpe, by which our lives are conducted. If we ignore those rules, burdensome though they may be, then we open the gates to anarchy and tyranny; the very things against which we fight! (Bernard Cornwell)
They were outnumbered, they were surrounded, yet no one had panicked, not one battalion had been caught deployed in column, and not one square had been rattled by the horse-men's proximity. The Light had saved the Seventh Division, and now it was saving itself with a dazzling display of professional soldiering. Pure drill was defeating French verve, and Massena's attack, which had swept around the British right flank with overwhelming force, had been rendered utterly impotent. View quote
Bernard Cornwell
Never in my life have I seen two villages on opposite banks of a river that weren't connected by a ford. View quote
Bernard Cornwell
He had trampled through Italy winning victory after victory, he had smashed the Russians on the border of Switzerland and rammed bloody defeat down Austrian throats before Marengo. Marshall André Masséna, Duke of Rivoli and Prince of Essling, was not a pretty soldier, but by God, he knew how to fight, which was why, at fifty-two years old, he had been sent to retrieve the disasters besetting the emporer's armies in Spain and Portugal. View quote
Bernard Cornwell
If you believe in a God, miss, pray now." "You don't?" "I believe in the Baker rifle and in the 1796 Pattern heavy cavalry sword, so long as you grind down the back blade so that the point don't slide off a Frog's ribs. If you you don't grind down the back blade, miss, then you might as well just beat the bastards to death with it. View quote
Bernard Cornwell
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. View quote
Bernard Cornwell
Sharpe bellowed in anger, the war shout. They thought him weak and beaten, but he had one fight in him and they would learn what a Rifleman was in a fight. View quote
Bernard Cornwell
A man could fight bullets and bayonets, even rockets if he understood the weapon, but no man understood the invisible enemies. Sharpe wished he knew how to propitiate Fate, the soldiers' Goddess, but She was a capricious deity, without loyalty. View quote
Bernard Cornwell
Can't help our damned parents which is why we have to thrash our damned children. View quote
Bernard Cornwell
Thank God for the hours of training, thank God that, for all its sometimes stupidity, the British army was the only army that trained its infantry with real ammunition. View quote
Bernard Cornwell
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. (Bernard Cornwell)
What did he want? A tournament? Who does he think we are? The knights of the round bloody table? I don't know what happens to some folk. They put a sir in front of their names and their brains get addled. Fighting fair! Whoever heard of anything so daft? Fight fair and you lose. View quote
Bernard Cornwell
Don't waste your life, Tom." "I think I already have, father." "You're just young. It seems like that when you're young. Life's nothing but joy or misery when you're young. View quote
Bernard Cornwell
Why do they call them vaulters?" "Vaulters?" "Voltigeur, Sharpe. French for vaulter." "God knows, sir." "Because the jump like fleas, sir, when you shoot at them. But don't worry yourself about that one, sir. He's a good voltigeur, that one. He's dead. View quote
Bernard Cornwell
My God, but I command King Ferdinand's guard and-" "And King Ferdinand, sir, is a prisoner! Which does not speak, sir, for the efficacy of his guard. View quote
Bernard Cornwell