Christina Stead quotes
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“If all the rich people in the world divided up their money among themselves, there wouldn't be enough to go around.”
-- Christina SteadSource : House of All Nations (1938) "Credo"
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“Creation of something out of nothing is the most primitive of human passions and the most optimistic”
-- Christina Stead -
“Old age is perhaps life's decision about us ...”
-- Christina SteadSource : Christina Stead (2016). “The Man Who Loved Children”, p.147, Head of Zeus
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“Each Australian is a Ulysses.”
-- Christina SteadSource : Christina Stead (1945). “For Love Alone”, p.255, The Miegunyah Press
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“The Chinese are a knowing people; and I daresay that is why they once made a religious odor about old age; to prevent their sons from seeing their own future.”
-- Christina Stead -
“To me, all the juice of a book is in an unpublished manuscript, and the published book is like a dead tree - just good for cutting up and building your house with.”
-- Christina Stead -
“Gentlemen are overestimated, that is my experience.”
-- Christina SteadSource : Christina Stead (1948). “A little tea, a little chat”
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“money that is in billions and monopolies isn't money at all, because the people have none, and money is democratic, everyone has to have some or there's none at all.”
-- Christina Stead -
“it's immoral to work to make money. There's something unlucky in it. You got to work for the work. You got to work on a farm, for the farm - then it makes money.”
-- Christina Stead -
“If misery spelled revolt, we should have had nothing but revolt from the beginning of time. On the contrary, it is quite rare.”
-- Christina Stead -
“Money is a jealous mistress If you want money you must want only money. ... I must tell you the one secret of life, there is only one: everything is a jealous mistress, everything is terribly possessive, and, by God, we want to be terribly possessed if we want to get somewhere - and we want to be terribly possessed - anyhow; or what is life?”
-- Christina SteadSource : Christina Stead (1948). “A little tea, a little chat”
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“Money goes where money is, money yearns where money is.”
-- Christina Stead -
“And gold has no name, it licks the hand of anyone who has it: good dog!”
-- Christina Stead -
“When people are collecting gold they aren't doing business. ... Gold is constipation: even bankruptcy is more fluid. Gold isn't wealth: positions in markets are wealth.”
-- Christina Stead -
“All new money is made through the shifting of social classes and the dispossession of old classes.”
-- Christina Stead -
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“It's easy to make money. You put up the sign Bank and someone walks in and hands you his money. The façade is everything.”
-- Christina Stead -
“A self-made man is one who believes in luck and sends his son to Oxford.”
-- Christina SteadSource : 'House of All Nations' (1938) 'Credo'
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“No rich man is a patriot, no rich man is a friend. They have all only got one fatherland the Ritz-Carlton; and one friend the mistress they're promising to divorce their wives for.”
-- Christina Stead -
“She was able to feel active creation going on around her in the rocks and hills, where the mystery of lust took place; and in herself, where all was yet only the night of senses and wild dreams, the work of passion going on.”
-- Christina Stead -
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“We are primitive men; we taboo what we desire and need. How did the denying of love come to be associated with the idea of morality.”
-- Christina Stead -
“Ye want to tell the plain truth all your life, woman, and speak straight; otherwise ye get to seeing double.”
-- Christina Stead -
“I know your breed; all your fine officials debauch the younger girls who are afraid to lose their jobs: that's as old as Washington.”
-- Christina Stead -
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“A mother! What are we worth really? They all grow up whether you look after them or not. That poor miserable brat of his is growing up, and I certainly licked the hide off her; and she's seen marriage at its worst, and now she's dreaming about 'supermen' and 'great men'. What is the good of doing anything for them?”
-- Christina SteadSource : Christina Stead (2016). “The Man Who Loved Children”, p.286, Head of Zeus
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“The sensuality, delicacy of literature does not exist for me; only the passion, energy and struggle… Most of my friends deplore this: they are always telling me what I should leave out in order to have success. But I know that nothing has more success in the end than an intelligent ferocity.”
-- Christina SteadSource : Christina Stead (1992). “A Web of Friendship: Selected Letters, 1928-1973”, Angus & Robertson Publishers
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“A woman can't be, until a girl dies. . . . I mean the sprites that girls are, so different from us, all their fancies, their illusions, their flower world, the dreams they live in.”
-- Christina Stead -
“About myself - no. I'm unimportant, an observer, a wandering animal.”
-- Christina Stead -
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“The waste, the insane freaks of these money men, the cynicism and egotism of their life... I'll show that they are not brilliant, not romantic, not delightful, not intelligent.”
-- Christina SteadSource : Christina Stead (2012). “House of All Nations”, p.126, Open Road Media
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“Anyone would think a thin stick like me, weak and miserable would go down with everything: do you think I get more than my cough every winter? I bet I live till ninety, with all my aches and pains. To think that's fifty more years of the Great-I-Am.”
-- Christina Stead -
“I do not want to go to heaven; I want my children, forever children, and other children, stalwart adults, and a good happy wife, that is all I ask, but not paradise; earth is good enough for me: it is because I believe earth is heaven, Naden, that I can overcome all my troubles and face down my enemies.”
-- Christina Stead -
“There are so may ways to kills yourself, they're just old-fashioned with their permanganate: do you think I'd take permanganate? I wouldn't want to burn my insides out and live to tell the tale as well: idiots! It's simple, I'd drown myself... Why be in misery at the last?”
-- Christina Stead -
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“The City is a machine miraculously organised for extracting gold from the seas, airs, clouds, from barren lands, holds of ships, mines, plantations, cottage hearth-stones, trees and rocks; and he, wretchedly waiting in the exterior halls, could not even get his finger on one tiny, tiny lever.”
-- Christina Stead
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