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Altruism is selfishness out with a pair of field glasses and imagination.

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
Pair
Pairs
Selfishness
Glasses
Field
Fields
Imagination
Altruism

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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.
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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.
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Creation of something out of nothing is the most primitive of human passions and the most optimistic
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Humorists are always pessimists. They're reactionaries: because they see that every golden cloud has a black lining.
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Each Australian is a Ulysses.
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A speculator is a man who, if he dies at the right time, has a rich widow.
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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.
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There'll be no sense in sexual theories until women start telling their minds and, of course, until they have some.
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I wish I had a man and not a dishrag printed over with big words like 'constitutional rights' and 'progress'!
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A single girl must lead a double life don't you think?
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A tory youth is a youth speculating on his future.
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About myself - no. I'm unimportant, an observer, a wandering animal.
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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.
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A woman is a hunter without a forest.
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It is most oppressive to be an aunt.
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Pukka sahib or rank outsider--gentleman or bounder--and it's accent, accent, all the way.
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If equity and human natural reason were allowed there would be no law, there would be no lawyers.
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Socialist writers are made of sterner stuff than those who only let their characters steeplechase through trouble in order to comeout first in the happy ending of moral uplift.
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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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