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Our duty, Richard, is to be decorative and stay alive long enough to be promoted. But no one expects us to be useful! Good God! A junior officer being useful? That'll be the day.

— Bernard Cornwell Sharpe's Fortress (1999)

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More quotes by Bernard Cornwell

Defeat the enemy's infantry and the cavalry and gunners had nowhere to hide.

Sharpe's Triumph (1997)

You can keep your sword, for you fought proper. Like a proper soldier. Take your blade to paradise, and tell them you were killed by another proper soldier.

Sharpe's Tiger (1997)

Never in my life have I seen two villages on opposite banks of a river that weren't connected by a ford.

Sharpe's Triumph (1997)

All feared the artillery, coughing its death in fan-like swathes.

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.

Sharpe's Triumph (1997)

All Bernard Cornwell quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Bernard Cornwell (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.