A garland of quotations LXVII

Culled from the finest scurvy dogs and desperadoes in literary history, and re-woven every Wednesday

Unlike the Royal Navy, the merchant navy, or indeed any other institutions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the pirate communities were, as already noted, democracies. A hundred years before the French Revolution, the pirate companies were run on lines in which liberty, equality, and brotherhood were the rule rather than the exception.
•David Cordingly, Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among Pirates (1995).

All the necessities of life hee filches, but one; he cannot steale a sound sleepe, for his troubled Conscience.
•Thomas Overbury, “Characters: A Pirate” (1615).

Some one has said that to plagiarise from the ancients is to play the pirate beyond the Equator, but that to steal from the moderns is to pick pockets at street corners.
•Nicholas Chamfort, Maxims, Thoughts, Characters and Anecdotes (1796).

If I am made to walk the plank by a pirate, it is vain for me to offer, as a common-sense compromise, to walk along the plank for a reasonable distance. It is exactly about the reasonable distance that the pirate and I differ. There is an exquisite mathematical split second at which the plank tips up. My common-sense ends just before that instant; the pirate’s common-sense begins just beyond it. But the point itself is as hard as any geometrical diagram; as abstract as any theological dogma.
•G.K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World (1910).

Dicaearchus, who finally met his death in Alexandria in 196 [BC], had a certain bizarre humor: whenever he anchored his pirate vessels he set up two altars, one to Impiety (Asebeia), the other to Lawlessness (Paranomia).
•Peter Green, Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age (1990).

Betwixt the Quack and Highwayman
What Difference can there be?
Tho’ this with Pistol, that with Pen,
Both kill you for a Fee.
•Henry Fielding, The Author’s Farce (1730).

I’ve labored long and hard for bread—
For honor, and for riches—
But on my toes too long you’ve tread
You fine-haired sons of bitches.
•Black Bart, note left at hold up, 1875.

I remember all those thousands of hours
that I spent in grade school watching the clock,
waiting for recess or lunch or to go home.
Waiting: for anything but school.
My teachers could easily have ridden with Jesse James
for all the time they stole from me.
•Richard Brautigan, “The Memoirs of Jesse James” (1970).

I had my eye on the Northfield Bank, when brother Bob did say,
“Cole, if you under to take the job, you’ll always curse the day.”
•“Bandit Cole Younger” (trad., ca. 1880).

Circumstances sometimes make men what they are. If it had not been for the war, I might have been something, but as it is, I am what I am.
•Bob Younger, St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Sept. 26, 1876.

Jesse James and his brother Frank
raided, robbed and rode away.
Said Frank to the rising Teddy R:
You’re my type, you’re okay.

Once on his way to a Shakespeare play
Frank was almost caught,
The gunnin Jameses and the writn Jameses—
two were taught and all were sought.

No killers were Frank and Jesse James,
they were drove to it. Their folks was proud.
Let no one imagine there were bad as kids—
brought up gentle in a bushwack crowd.
•Lorine Niedecker, “For Paul: Group Three” (1951).

Is it because liberty in the abstract may be classed amongst the blessings of mankind, that I am seriously to felicitate a madman who has escaped from the protecting restraint and wholesome darkness of his cell on his restoration to the enjoyment of light and liberty? Am I to congratulate a highwayman and murderer who has broke prison upon the recovery of his natural rights?
•Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790).

References: Overbury: Sir Thomas Ouerburie his wife with new elegies vpon his (now knowne) vntimely death: whereunto are annexed, new newes and characters written by himselfe and other learned gentlemen (Griffin, 1616); Chamfort: The Cynic's Breviary (Elkin Matthews, 1902); Bart: quoted in Vincent Paul Rennert, Western Outlaws: Vivid Accounts of the Deeds and Misdeeds of Nine Desperadoes (Crowell-Collier, 1967); Brautigan: Rommel Drives On Deep into Egypt (Delacorte, 1970); Younger: quoted in Mark Lee Gardner, Shot All to Hell: Jesse James, the Northfield Raid, and the Wild West’s Greatest Escape (William Morrow, 2013); Niedecker: From This Condensery (Jargon Society / Inland Book Co., 1985); some of this material is copyrighted, and I plead only fair use.