Jolly Roger Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Jolly Roger. Here they are! All 34 of them:

Then it hits me.... And it hits me with the force of a blow. I am maybe fifteen years old. I am a girl. I am also acting lieutenant in the Royal Navy, and, by the Naval Rules and Regulations as regards the chain of command, I am in command of His Majesty's Ship Wolverine.
L.A. Meyer (Under the Jolly Roger: Being an Account of the Further Nautical Adventures of Jacky Faber (Bloody Jack, #3))
We clear the harbor and the wind catches her sails and my beautiful ship leans over ever so gracefully, and her elegant bow cuts cleanly into the increasing chop of the waves. I take a deep breath and my chest expands and my heart starts thumping so strongly I fear the others might see it beat through the cloth of my jacket. I face the wind and my lips peel back from my teeth in a grin of pure joy.
L.A. Meyer (Under the Jolly Roger: Being an Account of the Further Nautical Adventures of Jacky Faber (Bloody Jack, #3))
Ah Padriac. I have often wondered if boys who have flaming red hair up top also have...yep.
L.A. Meyer (Under the Jolly Roger: Being an Account of the Further Nautical Adventures of Jacky Faber (Bloody Jack, #3))
And if that is the Foremast, what do you think that sail might be called, Mr. Wheeler?" "The Foresail?" "Very good, Mr. Wheeler, and the next one up would be called..." ..."The Next Sail, Sir?" "Alas, no, Mr. Wheeler.
L.A. Meyer
The Hispaniola still lay where she had anchored; but, sure enough, there was the Jolly Roger--the black flag of piracy--flying from her peak.
Robert Louis Stevenson (Treasure Island)
I'm only oldest because I was born first.
The Jolly Rogers
None of us can know today if tomorrow morning we will not be counted as part of a group considered outside the law. In that moment the civilized veneer of life changes, as the state props of well-being disappear and are transformed into omens of destruction. The luxury liner becomes a battleship, or the black jolly roger and the red executioner’s flag are hoisted on it.
Ernst Jünger (The Forest Passage)
own. The men of the Jolly Roger and the women of the Dolly Llama formed lines at opposite ends of the observation
Chris Colfer (Worlds Collide (The Land of Stories #6))
The Duchessa d’Aosta had been placed under the command of Geoffrey Appleyard and a skeleton crew, who were so delighted with their prize ship – and their Italian prisoners now locked below decks – that they hoisted a skull and crossbones from the mainmast. March-Phillipps exploded when he saw it fluttering in the dawn breeze. ‘We all got a rocket and we were told we weren’t to fly the Jolly Roger,’ recalled Leonard Guise. ‘He was a great stickler for etiquette, old Gus.
Giles Milton (Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: The Mavericks Who Plotted Hitler's Defeat)
Is this seat taken?” she asked him again, tapping on a chair at the table. “That’s where my Rum is sitting. He is my guest!” “But the bottle is in your hand, and not in this chair,” she spoke, pointing out the bottle. “So, it is!” he answered, looking at his Rum. Then, looking back at her: “But he was invited to this party.
Ted Anthony Roberts (Captain Skull: From the Memoirs of Sir Charles of Riley)
When handled in a civilized fashion, Piracy on the high seas could become more of a wise business decision than of a sheer, chaotic, unorganized criminal act. And I saw very little difference in what we were doing than the royals and courtiers were doing in the midst of cities, and of calling what they were doing legal and legitimate.
Ted Anthony Roberts (Captain Skull: From the Memoirs of Sir Charles of Riley)
I seek the face of God in the sky and in the waves of the ocean, not in some book or on my knees in some dusty church. “I
L.A. Meyer (Under the Jolly Roger: Being an Account of the Further Nautical Adventures of Jacky Faber (Bloody Jack, #3))
I am pitching it feebly," said young Bingo earnestly. "You haven't heard the thing. I have. Rosie shoved the cylinder on the dictating-machine last night before dinner, and it was grisly to hear the instrument croaking out those awful sentences. If that article appears I shall be kidded to death by every pal I've got. Bertie," he said, his voice sinking to a hoarse whisper, "you have about as much imagination as a warthog, but surely even you can picture to yourself what Jimmy Bowles and Tuppy Rogers, to name only tow, will say when they see me referred to in print as "half god, half prattling, mischievous child"?" I jolly well could "She doesn't say that?"I gasped. "She certainly does. And when I tell you that I selected that particular quotation because it's about the only one I can stand hearing spoken, you will realise what I'm up against.
P.G. Wodehouse
There were many of the upper and noble classes who had also found this alluring lifestyle completely irresistible; so many, many folks – from all over the world – had made their way over to the Caribbean for one reason or other, to readily embrace this attractiveness which it had produced for them!
Ted Anthony Roberts (Captain Skull: From the Memoirs of Sir Charles of Riley)
Arrr, shiver me timbers,” he said in an exaggerated pirate twang. He winked his uncovered eye and hooked his thumbs in his pants. “This is the nicest your mom’s been to a poor old bloke like me-self in days.” Sandra poked a finger in his chest, but grinned. “Don’t make me regret it, or you’ll walk the plank.” He grinned back and, with that eye patch, turned knee-meltingly rakish in under ten seconds flat. “Aye, I won’t be asking you to make me Roger jolly, if that’s what has you worrying.
Jennifer Shirk (The Role of a Lifetime)
The picture of human life in the market-place, though its general tint was the sad gray, brown, or black of the English emigrants, was yet enlivened by some diversity of hue. A party of Indians—in their savage finery of curiously embroidered deerskin robes, wampum-belts, red and yellow ochre, and feathers, and armed with the bow and arrow and stone-headed spear—stood apart with countenances of inflexible gravity, beyond what even the Puritan aspect could attain. Nor, wild as were these painted barbarians, were they the wildest feature of the scene. This distinction could more justly be claimed by some mariners—a part of the crew of the vessel from the Spanish Main—who had come ashore to see the humours of Election Day. They were rough-looking desperadoes, with sun-blackened faces, and an immensity of beard; their wide short trousers were confined about the waist by belts, often clasped with a rough plate of gold, and sustaining always a long knife, and in some instances, a sword. From beneath their broad-brimmed hats of palm-leaf, gleamed eyes which, even in good-nature and merriment, had a kind of animal ferocity. They transgressed without fear or scruple, the rules of behaviour that were binding on all others: smoking tobacco under the beadle's very nose, although each whiff would have cost a townsman a shilling; and quaffing at their pleasure, draughts of wine or aqua-vitae from pocket flasks, which they freely tendered to the gaping crowd around them. It remarkably characterised the incomplete morality of the age, rigid as we call it, that a licence was allowed the seafaring class, not merely for their freaks on shore, but for far more desperate deeds on their proper element. The sailor of that day would go near to be arraigned as a pirate in our own. There could be little doubt, for instance, that this very ship's crew, though no unfavourable specimens of the nautical brotherhood, had been guilty, as we should phrase it, of depredations on the Spanish commerce, such as would have perilled all their necks in a modern court of justice. But the sea in those old times heaved, swelled, and foamed very much at its own will, or subject only to the tempestuous wind, with hardly any attempts at regulation by human law. The buccaneer on the wave might relinquish his calling and become at once if he chose, a man of probity and piety on land; nor, even in the full career of his reckless life, was he regarded as a personage with whom it was disreputable to traffic or casually associate. Thus the Puritan elders in their black cloaks, starched bands, and steeple-crowned hats, smiled not unbenignantly at the clamour and rude deportment of these jolly seafaring men; and it excited neither surprise nor animadversion when so reputable a citizen as old Roger Chillingworth, the physician, was seen to enter the market-place in close and familiar talk with the commander of the questionable vessel.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter)
Peter?”. Peter si girò, abbracciando il corpo dietro di lui un po’ timidamente. Era proprio James. I suoi capelli sembravano ancora la criniera di un leone, anche se forse quell’effetto era dato più dal fatto di non averli tagliati per molti anni che da una precisa scelta stilistica. Il suo naso era ancora grande e aquilino, ma senza lo sguardo piratesco era un po’ strano, come sembrano a volte gli uccelli. Indossava una giacca da camera di seta decorata con diamanti rossi e dorati – tanto ridicola quanto quelle che aveva indossato come capitano del Jolly Roger. E i suoi occhi erano gli stessi: gentili, azzurri e incantevoli. James allungò la mano per accarezzare la guancia di Peter con le nocche delle dita, tracciò il profilo del suo mento con il pollice e doveva averlo sentito arrossire al suo tocco. “Dio mio,” disse con un tono stupito. “Sei davvero tu.
Austin Chant (Peter Darling)
Sunset. He had promised her until sunset. “If something goes wrong, we need to get her out.” Miles Dorrington looked thoughtful. “I say, we could raise the Jolly Roger and storm the fort as pirates. While they’re panicking, you sneak in and retrieve Jane.” “Too many cannons,” said Jack tersely. “You’ll be blown to splinters before we can get inside. Next?” Lizzy raised her crossbow. “I could—” “No,” said Jack and his father in unison. When Jack had finished glaring at his father, he said, “Jane and I discussed this. If she’s not back by sundown, Lord Richard and I”—Jack nodded to the blond man, who nodded back—“will go after her disguised as dragoons.” Lord Richard quickly took charge. “I’ll see that my men acquire the relevant uniforms.” “No,” said Jack’s new stepmother. “No?” Jack looked narrowly at his stepmother. “What do you propose, then?” His stepmother paced decisively down the deck. “Richard”—Lord Richard leaped agilely out of range of her parasol—“will stay and mind the Bien-Aimée . If Jane isn’t back by sundown”—Jack’s stepmother regarded him imperiously—“you and I will go after her.” “Gwen is very good at rappelling down walls,” said Jack’s father, looking at his bride with gooey eyes. “Up them, too.” “We’re not rappelling,” said Jack. If there was anything he hated, it was rappelling. It was as showy and useless as swinging through windows on ropes. “We’re going through the door.” “I’ve known that girl since she was born.” His stepmother stalked towards him, parasol point glinting. “I’ve protected her from more assailants than you’ve had hot suppers. If you go, I go.” “How lovely,” said Lady Henrietta brightly. “You can get to know each other.” Miles Dorrington prudently lifted his wife by the waist and deposited her out of parasol range. “We don’t know that she’ll need rescuing,” said Jack, staring down his new stepmother. “The plan might go as planned.” His stepmother snorted. “With the Gardener? I’ll go get my pistols.” And she departed, leaving Jack with a sick feeling at the pit of his stomach as he tried not to contemplate what the Gardener might be doing with Jane right now.
Lauren Willig (The Lure of the Moonflower (Pink Carnation, #12))
He was a very private man, a true loner, who lacked the instinctive affability and gregariousness of most successful politicians. One thought of him more easily as a strategist than a candidate. He hated meeting ordinary people, shaking their hands, and making small talk with them. He was always awkward at the clubby male bonding of Congress. When he succeeded it was because he worked harder and thought something out more shrewdly than an opponent and, above all, because he was someone who always wanted it more. Nixon had to win. To lose a race meant losing everything—so much was at stake, and it was all so personal. Taft, if not exactly jolly and extroverted, won the admiration of his peers because he was intellectually sterling. Ike inspired other men because of his looks, his athletic ability, his natural charm. Nixon was always the outsider; his television adviser in his successful 1968 presidential campaign, Roger Ailes, once said of him that he had the least control of atmosphere of any politician that Ailes had ever met. By that Ailes meant charisma, the capacity to walk into a room and hold the attention of those assembled there. Even success did not really bring him confidence.
David Halberstam (The Fifties)
The flag unfurled, and Thomas and the others gaped as they saw the familiar Jolly Roger—a grinning skull and crossbones. No, not crossbones. In place of the anticipated pair of crossed long bones was a pair of white cocks, with big balls and a bulbous head where the round joints of the bones should be.
Noah Harris (Lust in the Caribbean)
She loosened the fastenings of his breeches, and he just managed to avert emancipation of his Jolly Roger, which was overly jolly and only too happy to weigh anchor in her harbor. 
Barbara Devlin (Enter the Brethren (Brethren of the Coast, #1))
For a moment, nothing moved but the shredded half of the Jolly Roger flag on top of the mast. The deck was deserted, except for Samantha. But someone else had to be on board. In spite of a large fake wheel at the stern, I knew the boat was controlled from inside the cabin. There had also been a lounge in there, with a refreshment stand. Somebody must be down there, working the controls. But how many? Just Bobby Acosta? Or enough of his fellow cannibals to make things dicey for the good guys, who oddly enough included me tonight? The
Jeff Lindsay (Dexter is Delicious (Dexter, #5))
He shifted his weight to conceal his discomfit, as the woman worked on him in ways he could not have anticipated, and his Jolly Roger had just run up the colors. 
Barbara Devlin (Loving Lieutenant Douglas (Brethren of the Coast))
Anaya and McAda were engaged in the same criminal venture. Fran Tilbury, the regular at the Jolly Roger Social Club, and a friend of McAda’s, told investigators that McAda had a pistol, but only for his own protection. “He’s a brilliant man,” added Tilbury, “a friendly person, easy to get along with.… In fact, he’s such a good person that people sometimes take advantage of him.” The procedure in the second careo was identical to that of the first. But this time, Scott McAda was invited to speak first. He had come prepared with a statement to read out. “I requested the first confrontation with Mr. Holbert three months ago because I wanted to ask the detainee, in person, why he named me in his ridiculous, concocted story of lies. Naively I thought that if I confronted him face-to-face he might tell me the truth. But Mr. Holbert stuck to his lies. […] “In my first careo in May, I asked the detainee many questions and he did not provide one answer to any of them. Today, I will not ask the detainee any questions, because it only feeds him information for new lies. The people who the detainee himself
Nick Foster (The Jolly Roger Social Club: A True Story of a Killer in Paradise)
I bow to the Captain—I think a curtsy would be a bit out of place here—and recite, in French, the little speech I had made up for these occasions to try to tone down my growing reputation as a bloodthirsty pirate. “I am Jacky La Faber. Perhaps you have heard of me. I am a privateer who takes ships and their cargoes, but I neither harm nor rob the crews or the passengers of the ships I seize, no matter what you may have heard. You and your men will be put in one of your lifeboats and allowed to return to France.
L.A. Meyer (Under the Jolly Roger: Being an Account of the Further Nautical Adventures of Jacky Faber (Bloody Jack, #3))
I suppose Boston and its inhabitants have by now recovered from your visit?” “I guess so, but Boston was burning right cheerfully as I left.” Higgins
L.A. Meyer (Under the Jolly Roger: Being an Account of the Further Nautical Adventures of Jacky Faber (Bloody Jack, #3))
Two Texans are sitting on a plane going to Dallas with an old Jewish man sitting between them. The first Texan says, “My name is Roger. I own 250,000 acres. I have 1,000 head of cattle and they call my place the Jolly Roger.
Michael Krasny (Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means)
Two Texans are sitting on a plane going to Dallas with an old Jewish man sitting between them. The first Texan says, “My name is Roger. I own 250,000 acres. I have 1,000 head of cattle and they call my place the Jolly Roger.” The second Texan says, “My name is John. I own 350,000 acres. I have 5,000 head of cattle and they call my place Big John’s.” They both look down at the little old Jewish man, who says, “My name is Lenny Leibowitz and I own only 300 acres.” Roger looks down at him and says, “Three hundred acres? What do you raise?” “Nothing,” says Lenny. “Well then, what do you call it?” asks John. “Downtown Dallas.
Michael Krasny (Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means)
His office was in the county building next to Jolly Roger Donuts, and like that cliché, found himself to be a regular patron of coffee and donuts, his waist size increasing from a slim 32 to a more robust 36.
Anthony J. Viola (All Lies Begin With Truth)
We would seem to be in the presence of a genuine historical anomaly: a political entity that presented itself to the outside world as a kingdom, organized around the charismatic figure of a brilliant child of pirates, but which within operated by a decentralized grassroots democracy without any developed system of social rank. How to explain this? Are there any real historical analogies? In fact, the most obvious parallel would be pirate ships themselves. Pirate captains often tried to develop a reputation among outsiders as terrifying, authoritarian desperadoes, but on board their own ships not only were they elected by majority vote and could be removed by the same means at any time, they were also empowered to give commands only during chase or combat, and otherwise had to take part in the assembly like anybody else. There were no ranks on pirate ships, other than the captain and the quartermaster (the latter presided over the assembly). What’s more, we know of explicit attempts to translate this form of organization onto the Malagasy mainland. Finally, as we’ll see, there is a long history of buccaneers or other questionable characters who found themselves a foothold in some Malagasy port town, trying to pass themselves off as kings and princes without doing anything to reorganize actual social relations on the ground in the surrounding communities. Discipline on board sixteenth-century European ships was arbitrary and brutal, so crews often had good reason to rise up; but the law on land was unforgiving. A mutinous crew knew they had signed their own death warrants. To go pirate was to embrace this fate. A mutinous crew would declare war “against the entire world,” and hoist the “Jolly Roger.” The pirate flag, which existed in many variations, is revealing in itself. It was normally taken to be an image of the devil, but often it contained not only a skull or skeleton, but also an hourglass, signifying not a threat (“you are going to die”) so much as a sheer statement of defiance (“we are going to die, it’s only a matter of time”)—which crews making out such a flag on the horizon would likely have found, if anything, even more terrifying. Flying the Jolly Roger was a crew’s way of announcing they accepted they were on their way to hell.
David Graeber (Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia)
When I saw this pirate house I figured it was where he was headed." "How on earth could you know this was a pirate house?" "The skull and crossbones door knocker tipped me off." "Observant of you." "And the Jolly Roger flag flying from the eaves." "Well spotted." "And the fact the house is parked in the middle of Marine Parade, blocking traffic, with what appears to be a street lamp wedged beneath it." "Yes, well, we are experiencing minor technical difficulties.
India Holton (The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels (Dangerous Damsels, #1))
At that point, even the most inveterate pirates will have to trade in their Jolly Roger for the flag of a legitimate, disciplined navy. If they don’t, their organizations will devolve into chaos.
Reid Hoffman (Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies)
Miles tells King Mob that “we do not merely destroy our enemies.  We change them.”  This is a critical line because it illuminates the true nature of the war.  It is not a war of violence; it is a war of ideas.  The goal of each side is to win over people, to convince them that their side is right and the other’s is wrong.  Chaos and order are in perpetual conflict, and it is the interplay between the two elements that allows society to grow and change.  If one errs too far in one direction, things will fall apart – as we see with the descent into ultra-violence that is literally called “Things Fall Apart” (issue #9).  Generally, Morrison supports the Invisibles’ cause, as does the reader.  But the point of King Mob’s Volume Two arc, as well as the character of Jolly Roger, is to demonstrate that excessive chaos can result in the same kind of oppression as excessive order.  It’s best when the elements are in balance.
Patrick Meaney (Our Sentence is Up: Seeing Grant Morrison's The Invisibles)
You brought back a story of kindness and love and consideration for others...truly THE MOST WONDERFUL THING OF ALL.
Jolly Roger Bradfield (Pickle-Chiffon Pie)