Quote

Humorists are always pessimists. They're reactionaries: because they see that every golden cloud has a black lining.

Christina Stead

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Christina Stead
Age: 80 †
Born: 1902
Born: July 17
Died: 1983
Died: March 31
Novelist
Politician
Short Story Writer
Translator
Writer
Rockdale City
Golden
Clouds
Pessimists
Black
Lining
Every
Humorists
Always
Reactionaries
Pessimist
Pessimism
Cloud

More quotes by Christina Stead

Image
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 Stead
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I wish I had a man and not a dishrag printed over with big words like 'constitutional rights' and 'progress'!
Christina Stead
Image
A bank is a confidence trick. If you put up the right signs, the wizards of finance themselves will come in and ask you to take their money.
Christina Stead
Image
Men never believe a woman can do anything.
Christina Stead
Image
Pukka sahib or rank outsider--gentleman or bounder--and it's accent, accent, all the way.
Christina Stead
Image
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
Image
You want to be free and break new ground, speak your mind, fear no man, have the neighbours acknowledge that you're a good man and at the same time you want to be a success, make money, join the country club, get the votes and kick the other man in the teeth and off the ladder.
Christina Stead
Image
Anyone would think a thin stick like me, weak and miserable, would go down with everything: do you think I get more than my old 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
Image
Altruism is selfishness out with a pair of field glasses and imagination.
Christina Stead
Image
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
Image
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 Stead
Image
A tory youth is a youth speculating on his future.
Christina Stead
Image
A dominant race did not lie, because it had the whip.
Christina Stead
Image
Creation of something out of nothing is the most primitive of human passions and the most optimistic
Christina Stead
Image
Money goes where money is, money yearns where money is.
Christina Stead
Image
Financiers are great mythomaniacs, their explanations and superstitions are those of primitive men the world is a jungle to them.They perceive acutely that they are at the dawn of economic history.
Christina Stead
Image
All new money is made through the shifting of social classes and the dispossession of old classes.
Christina Stead
Image
A single girl must lead a double life don't you think?
Christina Stead