Australia Quotes - Page 3

Vast skies in the Australian desertwaves that don't movewe slide surf glide like condors

I liked learning but the challenge was that my mother's need to turn education into a competition was ruining the experience for me.

People give up. People settle. People persevere. And you can do all three if you're smart enough.

There was one thing no one considered, however: Australia was populated by Australians. While the rest of us were trying to adapt to a world that suddenly seemed bent on eradicating the human race, the Australians had been dealing with a hostile environment for centuries. They looked upon our zombie apocalypse, and they were not impressed.

Maybe I should have given more thought to her thoughts.

I love a sunburnt country,A land of sweeping plains,Of ragged mountain ranges,Of droughts and flooding rains.I love her far horizons,I love her jewel-sea,Her beauty and her terror –The wide brown land for me!

Tracker Marks was of a different opinion. Though he seemed more white than a white man, he had no time for their ways. For him his dress, his deportment was no different than staying downwind in the shadows of trees when hunting, blending into the world of those he hunted, rather than standing out from it. Once he had excelled at the emu dance & the kangaroo dance; then his talent led him to the whitefella dance, only now no-one was left of his tribe to stand around the fire & laugh & praise his talent for observation & stealthy imitation.The whites have no law, he told Capois Death, no dreaming. Their way of life made no sense whatsoever. Still, he did not hate them or despise them. They were stupid beyond belief, but they had a power, & somehow their stupidity & their power were, in Tracker Marks’s mind, inextricably connected. But how? he asked Capois Death. How can power & ignorance sleep together? Questions to which Capois Death had no answer.

Would I come off as a creepy-stalker-kind-of-guy or would it demonstrate that I cared?

After all, the girl actually had faith in something, which was more than most people had in these dark times. It was wrong to destroy it.

Nyree taught me not to trust anyone but Steve quickly corrected that lesson and taught me not to trust everyone.

A historic transition is occurring, barely noticed. Slowly, quietly, imperceptibly, religion is shriveling in America, as it has done in Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan and other advanced societies. Supernatural faith increasingly belongs to the Third World. The First World is entering the long-predicted Secular Age, when science and knowledge dominate. The change promises to be another shift of civilization, like past departures of the era of kings, the time of slavery, the Agricultural Age, the epoch of colonialism, and the like. Such cultural transformations are partly invisible to contemporary people, but become obvious in retrospect.

Everyones' worst problems weigh the same, and it's up to you how heavy that weight is and how much you let it drag you down.

And it's hard to hate someone once you understand them.

He was the captain of the rugby team and he was built like a fucking gorilla. He had the personality of a fucking gorilla, too.

What is it that Australians celebrate on 26 January? Significantly, many of them are not quite sure what event they are commemorating. Their state of mind fascinated Egon Kisch, an inquisitive Czech who was in Sydney at the end of January 1935. Kisch has a place in our history as the victim, or hero, of a ludicrous chapter in the history of our immigration laws. He had been invited to Melbourne for a Congress against War and Fascism, and was forbidden to land by order of the attorney-general, R. G. Menzies. He had jumped overboard, broken his leg, gone to hospital, failed a dictation test in Gaelic and been sentenced to imprisonment and deportation. When the High Court declared Gaelic not a language, Kisch was free to hobble on our soil...

My anger tempted the act of delinquency and it felt good to dabble.

Maybe if you allowed me to blow off some steam, I wouldn't have been so frustrated when I had to find higher order fucking derivatives.

Now comes the hard part. Peyton, Peyton, Peyton. Just say Peyton.

Being determined delinquents, Peyton and I jumped the barricades and wandered around the dilapidated interior.

Your days are only important if you decide to make them important.

If I hadn't worked up the courage to talk to Christy, she most likely would have been a pretty face that disappeared back into the crowd.

We human beings are story-tellers, we pass on our values through the stories we tell. This is particularly true of Catholics, who get their identity through their histories, which they see as salvation history linking them to the saving actions of Christ. So, for Catholics, doing history – passing on the values by telling stories – is a pastoral imperative. We must look where we have been in order to know where we are going.

One night a flock of red-tailed black cockatoos break the quiet as they charge up from the creek, right over the homestead, then down the hill towards Clem's house.'They're my favourite, you know, of all the birds, they're the best,' comes Tom's raspy whisper. 'I know Dad,' says Clem. 'You always say.''They're majestic, dramatic. You wouldn't argue with one.

You're very beautiful, dear', she said, 'what nationality are you, Indian?''No', I smiled, 'I'm Aboriginal.'She looked at me in shock. 'You can't be,' she said.'I am.''Oh, you poor thing,' she said, putting her arm around me, 'what on earth are you going to do?

When you look at it objectively, that’s what most colonists do—they land then find a way of wiping out their competition. In America is was blankets covered with smallpox and in Australia it was permits to hunt aborigines. If you wipe a whole people from the face of the earth, then there’s no one to point fingers at you. It’s just their spirits that haunt you and spirits can’t do shit.

You're very beautiful, dear", she said, "what nationality are you, Indian?""No", I smiled, "I'm Aboriginal."She looked at me in shock. "You can't be," she said."I am.""Oh, you poor thing," she said, putting her arm around me, "what on earth are you going to do?

There are no wastelands in our landscape quite like those we've created ourselves.

After spending the previous night the way I had, I felt I could afford to lose some of the daytime to sleep.

The best experiences can't be forced and they come when you least expect it. You don't find misadventure, it finds you.

Time is wasted on the young and experience is wasted on the old.