Christina Stead - House of All Nations (1938)

17 Sourced Quotes

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

Christina Stead
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
I wouldn't mind being your partner if there were two of me.

Christina Stead
If equity and human natural reason were allowed there would be no law, there would be no lawyers.

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

Christina Stead
It is a rule of creative ability that it does nothing of any value, while it is possessed by this afflatus of vanity.

Christina Stead
Sell, he can. He can sell last week's bait for tomorrow's halibut.

Christina Stead
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.

Christina Stead
Financiers are great mythomaniacs, their explanations and superstitions are those of primitive men; the world is a jungle to them. They perceive acutely that they are at the dawn of economic history.

Christina Stead
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
Why, if all the rich men in the world divided up their money amongst themselves, there wouldn't be enough to go round.

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

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

Christina Stead
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
A speculator is a man who, if he dies at the right time, has a rich widow.

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

Christina Stead
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