C. J. Dennis Quotes

Australian poet (1876–1938)

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Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis (7 September 1876 – 22 June 1938), better known as C. J. Dennis, was an Australian poet and journalist known for his best-selling verse novel (1915). Alongside his contemporaries and occasional collaborators Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson, Dennis helped popularise in literature, earning him the title "the laureate of the ".

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Alternative Names: Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis

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But the snobs are ever with us, snobs of art, of place, of pelf.
And, reading this, I rather think I might be one myself.

Someone has said
From the day we draw breath
Until life be sped
Two things are certain:
Taxes and death.
From the rise of the curtain,
On life's dreary round,
As hope wanes or waxes,
Man ever found
Two things are certain:
Taxes and death—
Especially taxes.

But it must not be thought that I abjure all physical effort. Only the day before yesterday I pulled up a dandelion. Next week I shall probably be busy pulling up the two other dandelions that will inevitably spring up in that place to avenge their brother. Dandelions are like that.

Yeh live, yeh love, yeh learn; an' when yeh come To square the ledger in some thortful hour,
The everlastin' answer to the sum Must allus be, "Where's sense in gittin' sour?"

You might grow bored with being good;
And, furthermore, I think you would.

Look fer yer profits in the 'earts o' friends,
Fer 'atin' never paid no dividends.

Oh, to be in England Now that Summer’s there!
For who plays the Game in England Is each morning well aware
That the cricket-pitch is water-logged,
And the in-field’s wet and the out-field’s bogged: For it’s surely raining, anyhow, In England—now!

For many years it has been my habit to divide gardeners into three classes. These are professional gardeners, professional amateur gardeners, and amateur amateur gardeners.

"How would I hold a husband? Is it that you’re askin’ me?
If it’s needful to hold, that is easily told— Be the scruff of his neck!" said she.

We done poor Muvver proud when she went out— A slap-up send-orf, trimmed wiv tears an' crape.

an ineffably pious person who mistakes this world for a penitentiary and himself for a warder.

It is on record (in a booklet written by Guy Innes) that when Dennis decided to migrate from South Australia he telegraphed his father, "Send ten pounds. Going ", to which appeal the old man promptly replied, "Sending nothing. Go to hell!"

Of all the gems in this wide world (No matter what their hue be),
The one I find most beautiful Is certainly the emerald.

I disapprove of people who moot things.

Sittin' at ev'nin' in this sunset-land,
Wiv 'Er in all the World to 'old me 'and, A son, to bear me name when I am gone. ... Livin' an' lovin'—so life mooches on.