Randolph Bedford Quotes

The Bible was second nature; and I had great interest in its gallery of bad men, beloved of the Lord. At least they said they were. Abraham, who represented his wife as his sister, so as to curry favour with Abimelech; Abel the lazy shepherd, who annoyed Cain so that that energetic farmer had to kill him; Noah, who ‘digged a vineyard’ and told tall stories of navigation; Jacob, who refused his brother a meal until Esau signed away his rights; and David, that pious scoundrel, who sent Uriah to death, so that he might steal Bathsheba respectably.

To-day, a Minister receiving a deputation personally promises ‘consideration of Cabinet’, in a tone that makes the deputation believe it has succeeded. To the wise the old rule persists. If a Government says ‘Yes’, it means ‘Perhaps’; and if it says ‘Perhaps’, it means ‘No’.

The different men we are in conceit and in humility! Vanity is all the vitamins and all the calories; vanity can keep a man warm in winter without blankets.

He had the biggest feet I have ever seen; larger feet even than the feet of that Brisbane man, of whom it was said that two large alligator skins had been sent from Cairns to make a pair of boots for him.

The womenfolk of early immigrants to Queensland brought cactus in a pot, because it had a ‘pretty flower’, and the ‘prickly pear’ escaped from the pot and destroyed twenty million acres of the finest land in the State; until the cactoblastis was introduced, and destroyed the pear. An old lady—craving her old-world home—brought sweet briar to South Australia; and it accounted for a few million acres in its turn. A fool pastoralist, whose most coherent phrase was ‘Tally-ho!’ or ‘Yoicks!’ introduced the fox, which has almost wiped out the lyre bird; and another fool introduced the starling. Other pests introduced were Freetraders, sectarianism, water hyacinth and rabbits.

Big Money is always on the Lord's side.

At the age of five I had begun an association with Temperance Societies; which ended at the age of sixteen—when I discovered the goodness of beer.

As salt as Lot's wife.

It is a quaint fact that the mediocre critic demands, in the one breath, a Parliament representative of all the people, and a Parliament of all the virtues and intelligences. A Parliament of genius would not represent the people, who are emphatically not genius, and Parliaments as they are, with one or two men above the average intelligence, and many men of average intelligence, and more men little better than morons, represents the nation—any nation.

Pretty as a picture and poor as a crow.

Politics in Australia, as in the rest of the world, are becoming duller and soberer, as the world itself becomes temperate in the use of strong waters. I don’t know the political calibre of the three-bottle men; but it is established, in any constructional thought or action, that, if the man who drinks does silly things sometimes, the teetotaller rarely does anything. Not that the drinking of liquor can make a man clever, but that the instinctive teetotaller lacks genius, although I have known one case of a teetotaller genius. Abraham Lincoln, replying to a puritan critic who said that General Grant drank whisky, wished that he had more whisky-drinking generals if whisky made General Grant do the things he did.

For we have here a beautiful land that none could e’er knock down,
The brightest jewel that ever was known in dear old George's crown;
The brightest jewel that ever was known and never can be a failure.
Although the damn Labor party is doing its best to ruin Australia...

The Governor was a little pink old gentleman; so soft in the skin that he seemed to be stuffed with moss.

Half way to Burwood there was a butcher’s shop, run by a Mrs Macnamara. She was a tall woman of great strength, working fiercely and living hard; a living testimonial to the forceful Colonial diet of beef and corn. She handled meataxe and saw as if they were toys. To see her chopping fore and hind quarters of beef fascinated me. I once heard her tell, without boastfulness, but in honest pride, that she was ‘doing six bodies a week’; which is a great tract and wilderness of meat.

It is not without design that the monkey with the rainbow stern climbs high. It is the advertisement of his sex appeal, and he doesn't climb far unless there is an audience.