People From Victoria

"You ain't got any tobacco," he said scornfully to Bunyip Bluegum. "I can see that at a glance. You're one of the non-smoking sort, all fur and feathers."

""Whiskers in the Puddin' is worse than puddin' in the whiskers," shouted the Puddin', standing up in his basin."

"They were a bloodthirsty lot, those sentimentalists who wept for the sad lot of the working classes."

"O Caribbee! O Barbaree! O shores of South Amerikee! O, never go there: if the truth be told, You'll get more kicks than Spanish gold."

"Very well sung, Albert," said Bill encouragingly, "though you're a trifle husky in your undertones, which is no doubt due to the gravy in your innards."

"O, who would be a puddin', A puddin' in a pot, A puddin' which is stood on A fire which is hot? O sad indeed the lot Of puddin's in a pot."

"After that they had boiled jam roll and apple dumpling, as the fancy took them, for if you wanted a change of food from the Puddin', all you had to do was to whistle twice and turn the basin round."

"One was a Possum, with one of those sharp, snooting, snouting sort of faces, and the other was a bulbous, boozy-looking Wombat in an old long-tailed coat, and a hat that marked him down as a man you couldn't trust in the fowl-yard."

"Bill was a small man with a large hat, a beard half as large as his hat, and feet half as large as his beard. Sam Sawnoff's feet were sitting down and his body was standing up, because his feet were so short and his body so long that he had to do both together."

"[H]e was a very well-bred young fellow, polite in his manners, graceful in his attitudes, and able to converse on a great variety of subjects, having read all the best Australian poets."

"Take my advice, don't carry bags, For bags are just as bad as swags; They're never made to measure. To see the world, your simple trick Is but to take a walking-stick— Assume an air of pleasure, And tell the people near and far You stroll about because you are A Gentleman of Leisure."

"Whiskers alone are bad enough Attached to faces coarse and rough But how much greater their offence is When stuck on Uncles' countenances"

"I am fanatic enough to believe that my thought is something the world needs."

"A writer who presents men and women as creatures truncated below the waist is exposed as one who goes about without his trousers saying, 'see, I have had my testicles removed.'"

"If anyone assumes that going one's own way is the easy way, they are very much in error. There's no harder way to go."

"A man’s self-respect is curiously involved with his ability to force a community to disburse certain sums of money for his maintenance and diversion. I have done thirty years of journalism, including jam-labels and inducements to use hair-restorers, and my conscience is undisturbed."

"If I didn’t escape at intervals with straws in my hair and commit a thoroughly idiotic, irresponsible and undignified piece of foolery, such as having a newspaper row with a politician over the banning of Redheap, for instance, I should have no other resource but to take myself seriously as an artist, and perish in a just conviction of ignominy."

"[N]o statement of a value in Art can have authority till the Art itself has forced that valuation on Life."

"The moral value of the Image in Art must consist in its power to arouse a conviction of Beauty.If a conviction of Beauty is aroused, all images of Passion and Action allied to it will become vitalized.Vitality in a work of Art thus becomes a communicable element in mind, and so fulfils its function of stimulating vitality in Life."

"[U]nder the present condition of muddle in Mind-valuations, we must accept the accident a geographical isolation, and label our poetry "Australian."Beyond that, we have no concern for these variations in degree of rock and mud which pass for national distinctions on earth. Our valuation is one of Mind only, which disregards localisations in Time and Space, and which alone can become the symbol of a value in eternity."

"The efforts of all common humanity are directed to one end — to make existence less difficult. To this end those rules of conduct that pass for morality also tend."

"At its highest, where does one find man’s effort trend away from the struggle for existence?In Creative Art.Therefore, in Creative art one must find the direction of Life.A statement so intrinsically aristocratic must be repudiated by all common minds.That is understood."

"If there is any man today who believes that the object of the eternal struggle for existence will evolve a higher type, an aristocracy of class, nation or race, that man has failed to read the history of mankind. In other words, he is a hopeless optimist."

"It is essential to effort that existence should be hard, painful and uncertain. It is essential that the struggle should endure, for it is by the struggle man develops. If it ceased, and life became perfect — effort would cease; Life would cease.For Life is effort."

"Sex is not only the basis of life, it is the reason for life."

"In the art of biography, the idolator is just as objectionable as the debunker."

"It has been, up to this, Britain’s job to push civilized conditions into the earth’s crude spaces, and a lot of wowseristic Bible-thumping Boer farmers were only obstructing a Roman occupation of the earth’s surface."

"I never indulge sentiment over broken friendships. We have extracted all we need from a friend, and so get rid of him on the same terms as he gets rid of us."

"Words are cheap currency, but coin of the realm has the sincerity on it."

"Livingstone Hopkins had an infirmity common to most professional humorists; in himself, he was quite humourless."

"The Labor Party has no objection whatever to the Germans practicing nazi-ism in Germany; that is their concern. We do not engage in any philisophic discussions with them about that system so long as they make no endeavour to foist it by force upon people outside their country. We stand for self-government. In the same way, we offer no opinions regarding the justification or non-justification of bolshevism in Russia; that is the concern of the Russian people. Their form of government is their own affair, just as our form of government is our affair. The Labor Party believes in the right of peoples to govern themselves, and to enjoy a way of life which they themselves decide upon. We concede that right to Russia. We concede that right to Germany, and it is because we are claiming it for ourselves, and Germany denies it to us, that we are at war with Germany."

"Let us hope that the war in which Australia, in common with the rest of the Empire, is engaged will elevate the conscience of our nation to new and nobler purposes."

"There must be no hesitation to assume control of the means of production where that is essential in the public interest. In the economic life of the nation, no private interest can be allowed to stand against the welfare of the majority. Irrational privileges which disfigure our present order should be abolished. Economic freedom must be made real by giving security and a rising standard of living to all who, by their labour, make civilised life possible. We must substitute co-operation for competition and public service for private profit."

"Since the outbreak of war, Australians have been asked to join the armed forces and to make heavy sacrifices in many other ways for the preservation of freedom and democracy. The response by the people of Australia has been magnificent. But the words ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ must be more than a slogan. They must represent real and living things in the lives of ordinary men and women."

"Be assured of the calibre of our national character. This war may see the end of much that we have painfully and slowly built in our 150 years of existence. But even though all of it go, there will still be Australians fighting on Australian soil until the turning point be reached, and we will advance over blackened ruins, through blasted and fire-swepted cities, across scorched plains, until we drive the enemy into the sea. I give you the pledge of my country. There will always be an Australian Government and there will always be an Australian people. We are too strong in our hearts; our spirit is too high; the justice of our cause throbs too deeply in our being for that high purpose to be overcome."

"This country shall remain forever the home of the descendants of those people who came here in peace in order to establish in the South Seas an outpost of the British race."

"The Australian Government, therefore, regards the Pacific struggle as primarily one in which the United States and Australia must have the fullest say in the direction of the democracies' fighting plan. Without any inhibitions of any kind, I make it quite clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom."

"I sit here in the upper circle surrounded by copper and gold, and smile with joy under my fly net as all the light, glory and quivering brightness passes slowly and freely before my eyes. Nothing happier than this. I shout and laugh at my immense wealth, all free and without responsibility. Who could steal this from me? No one. Oh that I could roll some up— as at present."

"One of the minor regrets, not really a big regret, is that I’ve never published a paper with Mac Burnet. I’ve published 500 papers, not a single one has Burnet as a co-author. He did not believe in putting his name on a paper if he hadn’t done at least one third of the work himself. A sort of an honest unselfish approach, when it comes time to reap the glory you do it without having someone grabbing it instead of you."

"I can see no practical application of molecular biology to human affairs... DNA is a tangled mass of linear molecules in which the informational content is quite inaccessible."

"I can see no hope at present of such a vaccine being produced... I have adopted a frankly defeatist attitude towards the problem of poliomyelitis and I hope that future developments will prove me wrong... No means of controlling poliomyelitis is at present visible."

"As I travel around the country I am seeing something new emerging across regional Australia. It is a new way of doing things, taking the great traditions that made the bush what it is today and blending it with the new. There's innovation, new technology and new potential, it's almost as if there's a quiet revolution going on..... some people call it the new bush."

"The resurgence of the Ned Kelly legend ... stresses the enigma of why one of the most decent, law-abiding peoples in the world should make a national hero of one of the most cold-blooded, egotistical, and utterly self-centred criminals who ever decorated the end of a rope in an Australian jail. His frankness in turpitude, his utter vengefulness, his cruelty, his cold-blooded lack of regret at the wiping out of the lives of decent men can only repel even an unfastidious mind. Yet his spirit has been extolled as the spirit of Australia, his animal lawlessness has been held up as a renewal of the spirit of Eureka."

"Ned's story falls on that universal fault line that makes someone a rebel or a freedom fighter to one group and an outlaw or a terrorist to another. He is regularly attacked as a thief and murderer. Much less regularly is it recalled that a government inquiry the year after the Kelly outbreak demoted or suspended most of the police involved. But what makes Ned a legend is not that everyone sees him the same—it's that everyone sees him. Like a bushfire on the horizon casting its red glow into the night."

"I wanted to see the thing end."

"They [the Government of Victoria] are all damned fools to bother their heads about Parliament at all, for this is our country."

"The bloody banks are crushing the life's blood out of the poor, struggling man."

"A man that kills his enemy, particularly an enemy out to slaughter him, is no murderer, and all police are my enemies."

"It is a very easy matter for me to pull the trigger, if you do not keep a civil tongue in your head."

"In California this man ... would have been dragged out of gaol and lynched. I don't admire the mob for superseding the law, but the spirit in which it is done there contrasts strangely with the exaltation here of Kelly as a hero."