"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."

"The peculiar rigidity of the English mind is seen at its noblest in the Times literary supplement."

"There is something extremely disgusting in having one's work pawed by policemen."

"The best love affairs are those we never had."

"Oh, no, no, no! Couldn't think of it. It's a very dangerous book. Had a very bad influence."

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

"These are faithful and loving studies of the model in which the breasts and thighs are as individual and eloquent as the faces, and every part of the body thinks, feels and speaks."

"Oh, rolling round the ocean, From a far and foreign land, May suit the common notion That a sailor's life is grand.But as for me, I'd sooner be A roaring here at home About the rolling, roaring life Of them that sails the foam.For the homeward-bounder's chorus, Which he roars across the foam, Is all about chucking a sailor's life, And settling down at home.Home, home, home, That's the song of them that roam, The song of the roaring, rolling sea Is all about rolling home."

"Don't you know that nothin' gives a man greater remorse than havin' his face punched, his toes trod on, and eggs rubbed in his hair?"

"Well, if this ain't enough to dumbfound a codfish."

"Let your conduct be noble, and never sing the National Anthem to people wearing bell-toppers."

"Thank you," said the Mayor, peevishly; " but, on the whole, I prefer to be restored with peeled bananas."

"But at this season puddin' thieves generally go south-east, owing to the price of onions."

"Bill, of course, treated this conduct with silent contempt. It was his rule through life, he said, never to fight people with beaks."

"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."

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

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

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

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"[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."

"[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."

"Probably the most original and significant sculptor of his generation, certainly the most provocative."

"(..as a practicing artist) You're competing against who came before and came after. You're just another stone in the wall, and if you make a contribution you're lucky."

"With any work of art, what happens is if you're open to seeing it you probably have a sensation," he tells the talk show host, "and that sensation leads to an experience and that experience is private and deals with your background, where you were born, what you've been exposed to, who you know, what your education was; and it will lead to other ways of thinking about other things."

"You can talk about the 'how' and the 'what', but "when you get to the "why" it gets a little more difficult."

"Don't start telling me buildings are works of art, because I don't buy it."

"Most of what you see in architecture are watered-down ideas of sculptors who have come before."

"To see is to think, and to think is to see."