“You never know what to expect on encountering royalty. I've seen 'em stark naked except for wings of peacock feathers (Empress of China), giggling drunk in the embrace of a wrestler (Maharani of the Punjab), voluptuously wrapped in wet silk (Queen of Madagascar), wafting to and fro on a swing (Rani of Jhansi), and tramping along looking like an out-of-work charwoman (our own gracious monarch).”

“Now, look you here, Sekundar," says I, but he came up straight like a little bantam and cut me off."Sir Alexander. if you please," says he icily, as though I’d never seen him with his breeches down, chasing after some big Afghan bint.”

“I'm as religious as the next man - which is to say I'll keep in with the local parson for form's sake and read the lessons on feast-days because my tenants expect it, but I've never been fool enough to confuse religion with belief in God. That's where so many clergymen... go wrong”

“I've been a Danish prince, a Texas slave-dealer, an Arab sheik, a Cheyenne Dog Soldier, and a Yankee navy lieutenant in my time, among other things, and none of 'em was as hard to sustain as my lifetime's impersonation of a British officer and gentleman.”

“I was sufficiently recovered from my nervous condition – or else the booze was beginning to work – to be able to discuss with Rudi the merits of checked or striped trousers, which had been the great debate among the London nobs that year. I was a check-er myself, having the height and leg for it, but Rudi thought they looked bumpkinish, which only shows what damned queer taste they had in Austria in those days. Of course, if you’ll put up with Metternich you’ll put up with anything.”

“...and suddenly, without the slightest volition on my part, there was the most crashing discharge of wind, like the report of a mortar. My horse started; Cardigan jumped in his saddle, glaring at me.....Be Silent! snaps he, and he must have been in a highly nervous condition himself, otherwise he would never have added, in a hoarse whipser: Can you not contain yourself, you disgusting fellow?--Flashman at the start of the Charge of the Light Brigade.”

“There's a point, you know, where treachery is so complete and unashamed that it becomes statesmanship.”