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

Christina Stead

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

More quotes by Christina Stead

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A speculator is a man who, if he dies at the right time, has a rich widow.
Christina Stead
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I wish I had a man and not a dishrag printed over with big words like 'constitutional rights' and 'progress'!
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 Stead
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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
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A single girl must lead a double life don't you think?
Christina Stead
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To me, all the juice of a book is in an unpublished manuscript, and the published book is like a dead tree - just good for cutting up and building your house with.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
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Weak, tea-drinking, effeminate, ineffectual--masters of India, robbers of South Africa, bedevillers of all Europe.
Christina Stead
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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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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
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A tory youth is a youth speculating on his future.
Christina Stead
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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
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A dominant race did not lie, because it had the whip.
Christina Stead
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Behind the concept of woman's strangeness is the idea that a woman may do anything: she is below society, not bound by its law, unpredictable an attribute given to every member of the league of the unfortunate.
Christina Stead
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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
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All new money is made through the shifting of social classes and the dispossession of old classes.
Christina Stead
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If equity and human natural reason were allowed there would be no law, there would be no lawyers.
Christina Stead
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The more we know, the better our intuitions.
Christina Stead
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Altruism is selfishness out with a pair of field glasses and imagination.
Christina Stead
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Gentlemen are overestimated, that is my experience.
Christina Stead
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Each Australian is a Ulysses.
Christina Stead