Australian Poet Quotes

Henry Lawson

Ada Cambridge

Rosemary Dobson

Shaw Neilson

Who says Australia offers not a home for every poor Englishman, or any other countryman that finds his way to our shores? And what sort of thanks do we get for it?

The young girl stood beside me. I
Saw not what her young eyes could see:
—A light, she said, not of the sky
Lives somewhere in the Orange Tree.

Now that I know that each star has its path, each bird is finally feathered and grown in the unbroken shell, each tree in the seed, each song in the life laid down - is the night sky any less strange; should my glance less follow the flight; should the pen shake less in my hand.

I really find listening to and reading the work of lyricists and songwriters as essential to my work as reading poetry itself. It is all poetry.

The heart holds, like remembered music,
a landscape grown too dark to see.

Down under we send soldiers and wool abroad but keep poets and wine at home.

John Streeter Manifold

One constant in a world of variables - a man alone in the evening in his patch of vegetables. and all the things he takes down with him there, where the easement runs along the back fence.

As I stood on the lonely backroad, I'm sure I heard birds, kookaburras, laughing...

Loss leaves us empty - but learn not to close your heart and mind in grief. Allow life to replenish you. When sorrow comes it seems impossible - but new joys wait to fill the void.

Wonder is music heard in the heart, is voiceless...

Rosemary Dobson

I sat in my desolation Withdrawn from all around, Feeling my life was a ruin, a failure. I was empty inside with the utter collapse of my being. I did not care anymore for living or dying. I was alone in my distress and desolation. But as I sat sadly on the ground, The sun reached out his hand to me and touched my face. And so my healing began.

Were spirits free from mortal mesh
And love not bound in hearts of flesh
No aching breasts would yearn to meet
And find their ecstasy complete.
For who is there that lives and knows
The secret powers by which he grows?

Christopher Brennan

To call it a crime against Mankind is to miss at least half its significance, it is also the punishment of a crime.

Frederic Manning

Man's evolution from the brute Affords him, with so many gains, Life, liberty and the pursuit Of peak-time buses, trams and trains.

Frederick Macartney

Psychologists are men with nothing in their own minds, searching in the minds of others for an idea-in order to kill it.

Alone! Alone! No beacon, far or near! No chart, no compass, and no anchor stay!