I know of few men over 50 that seem to me entirely human, virtually none who has long exercised authority.

And she hates being managed - that is not the word I want. What is it, Maturin?' 'Manipulated.' 'Exactly. She is a dutiful girl - a great sense of duty: I think it rather stupid, but there it is - but still she finds the way her mother has been arranging and pushing and managing and angling in all this perfectly odious. You two must have had hogsheads of that grocer's claret forced down your throats. Perfectly odious: and she is obstinate - strong, if you like - under that bread-and-butter way of hers. It will take a great deal to move her; much more than the excitement of a ball.

I know of few men over 50 that seem to me entirely human, virtually none who has long exercised authority.

The sensation of falling into the past is not unlike that of coming home for the holidays.

For very strangely his officers looked upon Jack Aubrey as a moral figure, in spite of all proofs of the contrary...

For me the process works best with no interruptions, no breaks in the steady application, no letters to be answered, very little social life, no holidays; it is therefore a form of happy imprisonment.

But the tale or narrative set in the past may have its particular time-free value; and the candid reader will not misunderstand me, will not suppose that I intend any preposterous comparison, when I observe that Homer was farther removed in time from Troy than I am from the Napoleonic wars; yet he spoke to the Greeks for 2,000 years and more.