Miles Franklin quotes
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“Someone to tell it to is one of the fundamental needs of human beings.”
-- Miles FranklinSource : Miles Franklin (2017). “Childhood At Brindabella: My First Ten Years”, p.114, ETT Imprint
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“Our greatest heart-treasure is a knowledge that there is in creation an individual to whom our existence is necessary - some one who is part of our life as we are part of theirs, some one in whose life we feel assured our death would leave a gap for a day or two.”
-- Miles FranklinSource : Miles Franklin (2007). “My Brilliant Career”, p.297, Broadview Press
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“It's a sign of your own worth sometimes if you are hated by the right people.”
-- Miles FranklinSource : Miles Franklin (1984). “The End of My Career”
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“there is a law of retribution in all things, direct or indirect, visible or invisible.”
-- Miles FranklinSource : Miles Franklin (2014). “Some Everyday Folk and Dawn”, p.105, Simon and Schuster
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“If the souls of lives were voiced in music, there are some that none but a great organ could express, others the clash of a full orchestra, a few to which nought but the refined and exquisite sadness of a violin could do justice. Many might be likened unto common pianos, jangling and out of tune, and some to the feeble piping of a penny whistle, and mine could be told with a couple of nails in a rusty tin-pot.”
-- Miles FranklinSource : Miles Franklin (2009). “My Brilliant Career”, p.456, The Floating Press
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“Grandpa ... was ever ready to cheer and help me, ever sure that I was a remarkable specimen. He was a dear old man who asked little from life and got less.”
-- Miles FranklinSource : Miles Franklin (2017). “Childhood At Brindabella: My First Ten Years”, p.66, ETT Imprint
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“It ain't what things actually are, it's all they stand for.”
-- Miles FranklinSource : Miles Franklin (2014). “Some Everyday Folk and Dawn”, p.178, Simon and Schuster
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“Civilization, stretching up to recognize that every child is a portion of State wealth, may presently make some movement to recognize maternity as a business or office needing time and strength, not as a mere passing detail thrown in among mountains of other slavery.”
-- Miles Franklin -
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“My mother is a good woman - a very good woman - and I am, I think, not quite all criminality, but we do not pull together. I am a piece of machinery which, not understanding, my mother winds up the wrong way, setting all the wheels of my composition going in creaking discord.”
-- Miles FranklinSource : Miles Franklin (2009). “My Brilliant Career”, p.63, The Floating Press
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“There are only two kinds of parents. Those who think their offspring can do nothing wrong, and those who think they can do nothing right.”
-- Miles Franklin -
“Only a very small percentage can regard conditions from any but a selfish point of view or conceive of any but their own shoe-pinch.”
-- Miles Franklin -
“Men always say there is no female Shakespeare.' 'Humph! You study the fellows who say that, and you'll see they are a long way from being Shakespeares themselves. Why shouldn't women have the same privilege?”
-- Miles Franklin -
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“Heed the spark or you may dread the fire ...”
-- Miles FranklinSource : Miles Franklin (2014). “Some Everyday Folk and Dawn”, p.81, Simon and Schuster
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“I early became conscious that men breathe more audibly than women. Sit in a room in silence with men and women, and you can always hear the men breathing.”
-- Miles FranklinSource : Miles Franklin (2017). “Childhood At Brindabella: My First Ten Years”, p.27, ETT Imprint
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“I never can see why they make such a fuss and get so frightened because wimmen does a thing or two now they usedn't to. Nothing short of a earthquake can make them not men an' wimmmen, an' that's the main thing.”
-- Miles Franklin -
“It is a wise provision that youth cannot see what it owes the previous generation. This is a chicken that comes back to roost in heavier years.”
-- Miles FranklinSource : Miles Franklin (2014). “Some Everyday Folk and Dawn”, p.93, Simon and Schuster
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“Before I was ten I became critical of the anthropomorphic God as interpreted in the churches. I did not warm to One thus revealed as the semblance of a bullying and mean old man who must have all his own way, be praised all the time and for attributes which were deplorable in us.”
-- Miles Franklin -
“In the career of a prodigy there invariably comes a time when it is compelled to relinquish being very clever for a child, and has to enter the business of life in competition with adults.”
-- Miles Franklin -
“It is the highest form of culture and craftmanship in art to use local materials. That way you stand a chance of adding to culture. The other way you are in danger of merely imitating it ...”
-- Miles Franklin -
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“Ah, the bitter, hopeless heart-hunger of godlessness none but an atheist can understand!”
-- Miles Franklin -
“What I absorbed from autobiographies was not how to be great so much as the littleness of the great.”
-- Miles FranklinSource : Miles Franklin (2012). “My Career Goes Bung”, p.28, Allen & Unwin
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“Cowards always drag in the Bible to back theirselves up far more than proper people does ...”
-- Miles Franklin -
“Women can always think as much as they like, an' they could get up on a platform an' talk till they bust, as long as they didn't want the world to be made no better, an' they wouldn't be thought unwomanly. It's soon as a woman wants any practical good done that she is considered a unwomanly creature.”
-- Miles FranklinSource : Miles Franklin (1909). “Some everyday folk and dawn”
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“... no problem except old age ever vanquished my mother.”
-- Miles FranklinSource : Miles Franklin (2017). “Childhood At Brindabella: My First Ten Years”, p.20, ETT Imprint
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“the way to wean any one from a desire is not by condemnation of it.”
-- Miles Franklin -
“Every now and again it would be considered wholesome for me to be more with people of my own age. Demotion to such company was a sapless exile. Their inanity was insufferable ...”
-- Miles Franklin -
“To grow up in intimate association with nature - animal and vegetable - is an irreplaceable form of wealth and culture.”
-- Miles FranklinSource : Miles Franklin (2017). “Childhood At Brindabella: My First Ten Years”, p.75, ETT Imprint
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“All is egotism. The only people whose mainspring is not egotism are the dead and perhaps idiots.”
-- Miles FranklinSource : Miles Franklin (1984). “The End of My Career”
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“Bravely you jog along with the rope of class distinction drawing closer, close, tighter, tighter around you... I see it and know it, but I cannot help you... I am only an unnecessary, little, bush commoner, I am only a - woman.”
-- Miles FranklinSource : Miles Franklin (2009). “My Brilliant Career”, p.463, The Floating Press
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“Girls! Girls! Those of you who have hearts, and therefore a wish for happiness, homes and husbands by and by, never develop a reputation for being clever.”
-- Miles FranklinSource : Miles Franklin (2009). “My Brilliant Career”, p.76, The Floating Press
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“When all is said and done, friendship is the only trustworthy fabric of the affections. So-called LOVE is a delirious inhuman state of mind: when hot it substitutes indulgence for fair play; when cold it is cruel, but friendship is warmth in cold, firm ground in a bog.”
-- Miles FranklinSource : Miles Franklin (1984). “The End of My Career”
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“I'm sure it's not any wish of mine that I'm born with inclinations for better things. If I could be born again, and had the designing of myself, I'd be born the lowest and coarsest-minded person imaginable, so that I could find plenty of companionship, or I'd be born an idiot, which would be better still.”
-- Miles FranklinSource : Miles Franklin (2009). “My Brilliant Career”, p.61, The Floating Press
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