Christina Stead famous quotes

If all the rich people in the world divided up their money among themselves, there wouldn't be enough to go around.
-- Christina Stead

#Money #People #World

Creation of something out of nothing is the most primitive of human passions and the most optimistic
-- Christina Stead

#Passion #Optimistic #Creation

Charm is a cunning self-forgetfulness.
-- Christina Stead

#Self #Charm #Forgetfulness

Old age is perhaps life's decision about us ...
-- Christina Stead

#Decision #Age #Old Age

Each Australian is a Ulysses.
-- Christina Stead

#Australia #Ulysses

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

#Religious #Son #Knowing

To me, all the juice of a book is in an unpublished manuscript, and the published book is like a dead tree - just good for cutting up and building your house with.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

#Book #Cutting #House

Gentlemen are overestimated, that is my experience.
-- Christina Stead

#Men #Gentleman

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

#Money #People #Monopoly

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

#Money #Work #Unlucky

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

#Revolution #Misery #Should

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 Stead

#Money #Passion #Jealous

Money goes where money is, money yearns where money is.
-- Christina Stead

#Money

And gold has no name, it licks the hand of anyone who has it: good dog!
-- Christina Stead

#Dog #Money #Hands

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

#Money #People #Gold

All new money is made through the shifting of social classes and the dispossession of old classes.
-- Christina Stead

#Money #Class #Shifting

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

#Hands #Making Money #Easy

A self-made man is one who believes in luck and sends his son to Oxford.
-- Christina Stead

#Believe #Son #Men

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

#Divorce #Men #Wife

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

#Love #Dream #Passion

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

#Love #Men #Ideas

Loneliness is a terrible blindness.
-- Christina Stead

#Women #Loneliness #Blindness

Ye want to tell the plain truth all your life, woman, and speak straight; otherwise ye get to seeing double.
-- Christina Stead

#Women #Want #Speak

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

#Girl #Jobs #Women

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

#Mother #Dream #Growing Up

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

#Struggle #Passion #Intelligent

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

#Girl #Dream #Women

About myself - no. I'm unimportant, an observer, a wandering animal.
-- Christina Stead

#Art #Animal #Wander

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 Stead

#Art #Intelligent #Men

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

#Art #Pain #Winter

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

#Art #Children #Believe

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

#Art #Thinking #Simple

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

#Art #Cities #Clouds