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Marcus Clarke Quotes
1846–1881 Australia
Marcus Andrew Hislop Clarke FRSA (24 April 1846 – 2 August 1881) was an English-born Australian novelist, journalist, poet, editor, librarian, and playwright. He is best known for his 1874 novel For the Term of His Natural Life, about the convict system in Australia, and widely regarded as a classic of Australian literature.
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23 quotes
To describe a tempest of the elements is not easy, but to describe a tempest of the soul is impossible.
A Man of Business is one who becomes possessed of other people's money without bringing himself under the power of the law.
Men change their dispositions as they change their climate.
As Mr Burnett said to me long ago, 'Q———, you will never be one of us. You have ruined your constitution by early temperance.'
It is no use borrowing if you mean to pay. There have been more men ruined by 'temporary accommodation' than anything else.
Distrust the men who make bargains. They are a disgrace to humanity. No man ever saw a dog swap a bone with another dog.
Mothers-in-law are ladies with daughters. A mother-in-law may be considered as the beard on the matrimonial oyster.
I am rather good at it. I have been always borrowing. If I can borrow nothing else, I borrow ideas.
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.
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.
Friendship, if you know how to work it, is better than a cousin in Parliament.
Everything he touched turned to gold. When he married an heiress even she died of the yellow fever.
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.
I used to drink so that the publicans, when they went out of business, used to sell me among the valuable fixtures.
Friends as a rule are a mistake.
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.
Every country can claim for itself a Robinson Crusoe of home manufacture. He of Australia is William Buckley.
I have examined you long enough. I have read your heart, and written out your secrets! You are but a shell—the shell that holds a corrupted and sinful heart. He shall live; you shall die!
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 MERRY CHRISTMAS!"
It takes two persons to make a Proper Friendship. The one has to be befriended, the other to be friendly. I'd rather be the friendly man by a darned sight. He gets all the fat off the mutual leg of mutton, and not unfrequently scrapes the bone.
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