Marcus Clarke Quotes

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 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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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 M<small>ERRY</small> C<small>HRISTMAS</small>!"

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.

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.

Friends as a rule are a mistake.