Norman Lindsay Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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

Whiskers alone are bad enough
Attached to faces coarse and rough
But how much greater their offence is
When stuck on Uncles' countenances

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

[N]o statement of a value in Art can have authority till the Art itself has forced that valuation on Life.

"Whiskers in the Puddin' is worse than puddin' in the whiskers," shouted the Puddin', standing up in his basin.

[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.

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.

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.'

"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."

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?

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

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.