C. J. Dennis Quotes

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

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?"

"Wot's in a name?" she sez. 'Struth, I dunno.
Billo is just as good as Romeo.

"A boy!" she sez. "An' bofe is doin' well!"
I drops into a chair, an' jist sez—"'Ell!" It was a pray'r. I feels bofe crook an' glad. ... An' that's the strength of bein' made a dad.

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.

Willy! O 'ell! 'Ere wus a flamin' pill! A moniker that alwus makes me ill.
"If it's the same to you, mum," I replies "I answer quicker to the name of Bill."

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.

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 poetry I've read
I’ve never yet seen one (he said)
That couldn’t be, far as it goes,
Much better written out in prose.
It’s what they eat, I often think;
Or, yet more likely, what they drink.
Aw, poets! All the tribe, by heck,
Give me a swift pain in the neck.

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.

Livin' an' lovin'; learnin' day be day; Pausin' a minute in the barmy strife
To find that 'elpin' others on the way Is gold coined fer your profit—sich is life.

I disapprove of people who moot things.

Now, a woman, she’s a woman. I ’ave fixed that for a cert.
They’re jist as like as rows uv peas from ’at to ’em uv skirt.
An’ then, they’re all so different, yeh find, before yeh’ve done,
The more yeh know uv all uv ’em the less yeh know uv one.

They say the whole world’s down and out; But here’s what I can’t see:
If every land, beyond all doubt,
In all the earth is up the spout— Then who's the mortgagee?