playwrights-from-australia

"He was petulent as a child, irritable to a degree at the least criticism, oscillating between apparently unaffected indifference to public opinion and the keenest appetite for its applause. The genuine indifference was that of a jaded man who has lost self-confidence and is thoroughly weak of will. His affected indifference was part of a theatrical pose he played with foolish ostentation. He was such a mass of weaknesses and wilfulnesses and insincerities that he leaned for support upon any who could win his confidence, which could always be accomplished by flatterers or intriguers."

"... his politics were a chaos and his career contemptible."

"One of Sir Henry Parkes's besetting foibles was a love of associating himself with notables of the day, of whom he devoutly preserved all mementoes, of whom he frequently spoke and with whom he corresponded whenever possible. At the [Federation] Conference of 1890 he managed to introduce with comments a letter from Lecky and to mention by the way that he had been introduced to him by Lord Tennyson."

"He possessed for a time practically despotic authority "On the one condition", as he shrewdly said, "that I did not exercise it.""

"In public life ... he had but one aim — his own aggrandisement."

"Knowledge was his forte and omniscience his foible."

"His colonial career though brilliant in parts was, on the whole, unsatisfactory, largely owing to British prejudice against an avowed 'Irish rebel' and partly owing to un attractive characteristics of temperament. My acquaintance with him was slight and short. He was Speaker of the Legislative Assembly when I entered it for a day in 1879 but not when I returned in 1880. His intellectual forehead, dignified demeanour and carefully polished utterances well fitted him for the post, though his voice at once weak and harsh, thin and squeaky, and his cold, calculating eye indicated the physical and emotional defects which helped to cripple his efforts and to defeat his soaring ambition. The literary graces and practised craftsmanship manifest in all his writings indicate the natural bent of his abilities and enable him to present in his autobiography a flattering full-length portrait of himself as he believed himself or desired others to believe him to be."

"Reid was neither federal nor anti-federal but either at need and as far as possible both at once. It is difficult indeed to describe so extraordinary a man without appearing to caricature him ..."

"Sir Thomas was a man of business, stout, florid, choleric, curt and Cromwellian."

"He sought rest only in perpetual physical motion."

"He had apparently no illusions, no passions and no pre dominantly great ideals. He had the official manner, imperturbable and impenetrable, which would have made the fortune of an ambassador in Bismarck's eves."

"A splendidly built man of towering height but never unwieldy, with a high forehead, keen eyes glittering through his spectacles, strongly marked features, and manly address, his many charms of character and some powers of mind were ill conjoined. He was not only prejudiced even among the New South Welshmen of his day, but obstinate, eccentric and changeable. Converted from an ardent Free Trader into a strong Protectionist almost without an interval long enough to permit of baptism, he compared it, himself. to the miraculous conversion of St Paul."

"Though a Tasmanian born he appealed at all times to the narrowest Sydney and New South Wales provincialism by the pettiest and meanest acts and proposals. He was an anti- Federalist from the first, except upon terms which should ensure the absolute supremacy of his own colony as a stepping- stone to his own elevation."

"Parkes said of himself and another member that they were alike in that they consistently lived above their means. He was as much an admirer of the fair sex, so that when once on a specially dashing woman appearing in the gallery of the New South Wales Assembly, and Parkes being asked who she was, replied in sardonic style: "Well I don't know myself. I've asked George Reid and Wise, and they don't know, from which I conclude that she must be a woman of good reputation.""

"He seldom, if ever, fought with an axe. His weapon was the rapier..."

"His nervous instability was painful, his poses perpetual and his vanity colossal."

"He was timorous, changeable, inconsistent, erratic, gloomy and absorbed, then sparkling and excitable by turns, his fine face pale and puffy — his fine head rapidly turning grey — his figure growing too portly — his hand trembling, his eye restless, his demeanour that of one who drifted in and out of dreams and some of them bad dreams."

"A man of talent and of clean good sense, Who speaks with polished air — On silver floods of his own eloquence He floats to God knows where."

"I have examined you long enough. I have read your heart, and written out your secrets! You are but a shell—the shell that holds a corrupted and sinful heart. He shall live; you shall die!"

"Take care what you say! I'll have no hard words. Wretch! If I am a wretch, who made me one? If I hate you and myself and the world, who made me hate it? I was born free—as free as you are. Why should I be sent to herd with beasts, and condemned to this slavery, worse than death?"

"To describe a tempest of the elements is not easy, but to describe a tempest of the soul is impossible."

"Men change their dispositions as they change their climate."

"It takes two persons to make a Proper Friendship. The one has to be befriended, the other to be friendly. I'd rather be the friendly man by a darned sight. He gets all the fat off the mutual leg of mutton, and not unfrequently scrapes the bone."

"Convictism having been safely got under hatches, and put to bed in its Government allowance of sixteen inches of space per man, cut a little short by exigencies of shipboard, the cuddy was wont to pass some not unpleasant evenings."

"No poor man can afford to have many friends. They would ruin him. Indeed, friendship is a luxury which should be indulged in with caution even by the rich."

"As Mr Burnett said to me long ago, 'Q———, you will never be one of us. You have ruined your constitution by early temperance.'"

"You cannot bet on friends. They will go and do all sorts of things to spite you. I insured a friend's life once, and got him to assign me the policy. He was a chronic case of rheumatism, and might have died in the course of nature calmly in his bed at any time. We quarrelled one day, and the fellow deliberately sent out and bought a bottle of Connel's East Indian remedies, and took a pint of it every half hour, according to the directions on the label. At the tenth pint he gently dissolved, and the jury brought it in 'determined suicide'. I tried hard to put in a plea of insanity, but it was no use.After this I forswore friendship, except as a gentle stimulant, and in case of sickness."

"About a hundred and seventy miles to the south of this mill-race lies Van Diemen's Land, fertile, fair, and rich, rained upon by the genial showers from the clouds which, attracted by the Frenchman's Cap, Wyld's Crag, or the lofty peaks of the Wellington and Dromedary range, pour down upon the sheltered valleys their fertilizing streams. No parching hot wind—the scavenger, if the torment, of the continent—blows upon her crops and corn. The cool south breeze ripples gently the blue waters of the Derwent, and fans the curtains of the open windows of the city which nestles in the broad shadow of Mount Wellington. The hot wind, born amid the burning sand of the interior of the vast Australian continent, sweeps over the scorched and cracking plains, to lick up their streams and wither the herbage in its path, until it meets the waters of the great south bay; but in its passage across the straits it is reft of its fire, and sinks, exhausted with its journey, at the feet of the terraced slopes of Launceston."

"A Man of Business is one who becomes possessed of other people's money without bringing himself under the power of the law."

"I am rather good at it. I have been always borrowing. If I can borrow nothing else, I borrow ideas."

"They are the cream of the social bowl—in their own estimation. The stone pillars which, according to the Arabic legend, hold the earth up. There never was, or can be, anything to equal them. You may be the best fellow in the world, the sole support of an aged mother, and the protector of a whole boarding-schoolful of orphan sisters. You may work like a horse, and give all your goods to feed the poor, but if you are not a Business Man, you are sounding brass or tinkling cymbal. To be a Business Man is a special gift—a sort of inherent virtue, like a cast in the eye."

"What can I write in thee, O dainty book, About whose daintiness quaint perfume lingers— Into whose pages dainty ladies look, And turn thy dainty leaves with daintier fingers? ...No melodies have I for ladies' ear, No roundelays for jocund lads and lasses— But only brawlings born of bitter beer, And chorussed with the clink and clash of glasses. ...Thou breathest purity and humble worth— The simple jest, the light laugh following after, I will not jar upon thy modest mirth With harsher jest, or with less gentle laughter."

"The Australian black is as far removed from and Chingachook, as Uncas and Chingachook are from reality. ... An Australian Romeo would bear his Juliet off with the blow of a club, and Juliet would prepare herself for her bridal by "greasing herself from head to foot with the kidney-fat of her lover's rival." Poor Paris! ... No genius among them has ever invented a net or a snare. ... A child every two years is considered enough for any reasonable mother, and should she indulge in more, the indignant father cracks its skull against the nearest tree. Nothing is new, we see,—not even Social Science."

"Mothers-in-law are ladies with daughters. A mother-in-law may be considered as the beard on the matrimonial oyster."

"Distrust the men who make bargains. They are a disgrace to humanity. No man ever saw a dog swap a bone with another dog."

"Borrowing may be reduced to a Science, or elevated to an Art. Borrowing an umbrella is a science; borrowing half-a-crown is an art. The man who begins with an umbrella may get to half-a-crown, or even five shillings.Some men are born borrowers, and some have borrowing thrust upon them; and some thrust borrowing upon other people. I made a man lend me twenty pounds for three months, by telling him that I would pay him punctually, and writing my name on a piece of paper. There is always a fool to be found somewhere. Sometimes lenders become unpleasant. One lender put me into gaol, and said I was a swindler. He had no appreciation for art."

"It is no use borrowing if you mean to pay. There have been more men ruined by 'temporary accommodation' than anything else."

"Men who tell you that you ought to go into Parliament are usually pretty safe. You can borrow from them easily. One of these persons told me that I ought to be a Member of Parliament, because I was such a thundering liar."

"I used to drink so that the publicans, when they went out of business, used to sell me among the valuable fixtures."

"I am not a teetotaller — at least, not now. I used to be, but my constitution is not strong, and I could not stand the dissipation."

"Friends as a rule are a mistake."

"I have had many friends, like the hare in the fable, but most of them didn't pay expenses. Friendship is like mining; sometimes you drop into a good thing, but the majority of places are duffers."

"Bouncer was a friend of mine, and when I was going to be married to Miss Tallon, with £50,000, Bouncer said, 'Q., introduce me, old fellow, as your friend! I did; and in six weeks he married the lady. My only consolation was that her father became insolvent before the end of the year."

"Friendship, if you know how to work it, is better than a cousin in Parliament."

"He couldn't be content with small profits, so he took to cards, and was shot aboard a river steamboat. God bless him. He died like a hero, with a king up his sleeve."

"Everything he touched turned to gold. When he married an heiress even she died of the yellow fever."

"Here I am in bed, with vinegar and brown paper over my nose, all the children sick, the baby howling like an unfledged tempest, some £500 to pay to-morrow; and as I sink disgustedly to sleep, Eliza murmurs (through the brown paper), "I hope you have spent a MERRY CHRISTMAS!""

"Every country can claim for itself a of home manufacture. He of Australia is William Buckley."

"All my soul is slowly melting, all my brain is softening fast, And I know that I'll be taken to the Yarr bend at last. For at night from fitful slumbers I awaken with a start, Murmuring of steak and onions, babbling of apple-tart. While to me the Poet's cloudland a gigantic kitchen seems, And those mislaid table-napkins haunt me even in my dreams Is this right? — Ye sages tell me! — Does a man live but to eat? Is there nothing worth enjoying but one's miserable meat? Is the mightiest task of genius but to swallow buttered beans, And has man but been created to demolish pork and greens? Is there no unfed Hereafter, where the round of chewing stops? Is the atmosphere of heaven clammy with perpetual chops?"

"I used to be a dreadful fellow — nearly as bad as the drunkards in the storybook. I have been drunk for a year and a-half at a stretch. It was natural for me to drink. When I was about three days and a-half old, I saw my nurse hide a brandy bottle away in a cupboard that she couldn't get at afterwards. I never said anything about it then, but as soon as I could walk, I got the keys and drank that brandy."