Patrick O'Brian

Captain Jack Aubrey of the Royal Navy and Stephen Maturin, ship's surgeon and intelligence agent, return to set sail for the South China Sea on a diplomatic mission intended to prevent links between Bonaparte and the Malay Princes

The Thirteen Gun Salute (Vol. Book 13) (Aubrey/Maturin Novels)

Gavin

when he too came round the corner he was on top of the ape. She was sitting on a stone, resting her feet. He scarcely knew what to do; it seemed an intrusion. ‘God be with you, ape,’ he said in Irish, which in his confusion seemed more appropriate. She turned her head and looked him full in the face; her expression was sad, weary, in no way hostile – remote



  “So you are an Englishman.’
‘No, sir,’ said Stephen. ‘I am an Irishman. But for the moment Ireland is subject to England, and therefore at war with France.’
‘England and Ireland are small islands on the farthest western extremity of the world,’ said another monk. ‘They are so close together that they can scarcely be distinguished; birds flying at a great height may land on the one rather than on the other. But in fact England is the larger.’
‘It is true that they are close together, and that it is not always easy to distinguish them from a great distance; but then, sir, the same applies to right and wrong.’
‘Good and evil are so close at times,’ observed the Abbot, ‘that there is scarcely the breadth of a hair between them”




  "...a thief is not always stealing nor a murderer always murdering, whereas a man’s sexual instincts are with him all the time, day and night. Yet it is curious to see how the self-hater often succeeds in retaining his self-esteem in relation to others, usually by means of a general denigration: he sees himself as a worthless creature, but his fellows as more worthless still.”

The Thirteen Gun Salute (Vol. Book 13) (Aubrey/Maturin Novels)

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