My Brilliant Career quotes

For a poet must be companionless—alone! fearfully alone in the midst of his fellows whom he loves. Alone because his soul is as far above common mortals as common mortals are above monkeys.

There is no plot in this story, because there has been none in my life or in any other life which has come under my notice.

I am one of a class, the individuals of which have not time for plots in their life, but have all they can do to get their work done without indulging in such a luxury.

The boys, as they attained manhood, drifted outback to shear, drove, or to take up land. They found it too slow at home, and besides there was not room enough for them there when they passed childhood.

Nothing ever happened there. Time was no object, and the days slid quietly into the river of years, distinguished one from another by name alone.

An occasional birth or death was a big event, and the biggest event of all was the advent of a new resident.

My mother had taught me from the Bible that I should honour my parents, whether they were deserving of honour or not.

Dick Melvyn being my father did not blind me to the fact that he was a despicable, selfish, weak creature, and as such I despised him with the relentlessness of fifteen, which makes no allowance for human frailty and weakness.

Disgust, not honour, was the feeling which possessed me when I studied the matter.

At the time I mention it was 3d. and 4d. per lb., so it was much work and small pay. It was slaving and delving from morning till night—Sundays, weekdays, and holidays, all alike were workdays to us.

Hard graft is a great leveller.

Household drudgery, woodcutting, milking, and gardening soon roughen the hands and dim the outside polish. When the body is wearied with much toil the desire to cultivate the mind, or the cultivation it has already received, is gradually wiped out.

This told upon me and made my physical burdens harder for me than for other children of my years around me. That third was the strongest part of me. In it I lived a dream-life with writers, artists, and musicians.

Hope, sweet, cruel, delusive Hope, whispered in my ear that life was long with much by and by, and in that by and by my dream-life would be real.

So on I went with that gleaming lake in the distance beckoning me to come and sail on its silver waters, and Inexperience, conceited, blind Inexperience, failing to show the impassable pit between it and me.

The poor beast moaned. The lifting had strained her, and there were patches of hide worn off her the size of breakfast-plates, sore and most harrowing to look upon.

It takes great suffering to wring a moan from the patience of a cow.

I turned my head away, and with the impatience and one-sided reasoning common to fifteen, asked God what He meant by this.

It was hot unpleasant work on such a day. We were forced to keep the doors and windows closed on account of the wind and dust. We were hot and tired, and our feet ached so that we could scarcely stand on them.

Summer is fiendish and life is a curse, I said in my heart.

Day after day the drought continued.

Our friends had sent the money, and the neighbours did the bidding—none bidding against each other—and thus our belongings went for a mere trifle. Every cloud has its silver lining, and the black cloud of poverty has a very bright silver lining.

In poverty you can get at the real heart of people as you can never do if rich.

People are your friends from pure friendship and love, not from sponging self-interestedness. It is worth being poor once or twice in a lifetime just to experience the blessing and heartrestfulness of a little genuine reality in the way of love and friendship.

In poverty you can get at the real heart of people as you can never do if rich. People are your friends from pure friendship and love, not from sponging self-interestedness.

It is worth being poor once or twice in a lifetime just to experience the blessing and heartrestfulness of a little genuine reality in the way of love and friendship.

Not that it is impossible for opulence to have genuine friends, but rich people, I fear, must ever have at their heart cankering suspicion to hint that the friendship and love lavished upon them is merely self-interestedness and sham, the implements of trade used by …

My mother is a good woman—a very good woman—and I am, I think, not quite all criminality, but we do not pull together.

I am a piece of machinery which, not understanding, my mother winds up the wrong way, setting all the wheels of my composition going in creaking discord.

She wondered why I did not cry and beg forgiveness, and thereby give evidence of being human. I was too wrought up for tears. Ah, that tears might have come to relieve my overburdened heart!

“I love you, Sybylla, better than all the rest. I could not do without you,” and she put her pretty face to mine and kissed me.

What a balm to the tempest-tossed soul is a little love, though it may be fleeting and fickle!

I was able to weep now, with wild hot tears, and with my sister’s arms around me I fell asleep without undressing further.

So, if you feel that you are afflicted with more than ordinary intelligence, and especially if you are plain with it, hide your brains, cramp your mind, study to appear unintellectual—it is your only chance.

Provided a woman is beautiful allowance will be made for all her shortcomings.

She can be unchaste, vapid, untruthful, flippant, heartless, and even clever; so long as she is fair to see men will stand by her, and as men, in this world, are “the dog on top,” they are the power to truckle to.

“The toad beneath the harrow knows Exactly where each tooth-point goes. The butterfly upon the road Preaches contentment to the toad.”

I wasn’t anxious to patronize the dull kind of tame nobility of the toad; I longed for a few of the triumphs of the butterfly, decried though they are as hollow bubbles.

I desired life while young enough to live, and quoted as my motto:

I prayed, often and ardently, but ever came that heart-stilling whisper that there was nothing to pray to.

Ah, the bitter, hopeless heart-hunger of godlessness none but an atheist can understand!

Nothing to live for in life—no hope beyond the grave. It plunged me into fits of profound melancholy.

But in all the wide world there was not a soul to hold out a hand to me, and I said bitterly, “There is no good in the world.” In softer moods I said, “Ah, the tangle of it!

Those who have the heart to help have not the power, and those who have the power have not the heart.

”

In softer moods I said, “Ah, the tangle of it! Those who have the heart to help have not the power, and those who have the power have not the heart.”

Bad, like a too-strong opponent in a game of chess, is ever at the elbow of good to checkmate it like a weakly managed king.

I am sadly lacking in self-reliance. I needed someone to help me over the rough spots in life, and finding them not, at the age of sixteen I was as rank a cynic and infidel as could be found in three days’ march.

I alighted from the buggy feeling rather nervous.

I was a pauper with a bad character.

How would my grandmother receive me? Dear old soul, I had nothing to fear. She folded me in a great warmhearted hug, saying, “Dear me, child, your face is cold. I’m glad you’ve come.

I could scarcely believe that they were addressing me. Surely they were making a mistake. This reception was meant for some grand relative honouring them with a visit, and not for the ugly, useless, bad little pauper come to live upon their bounty.

Their welcome did more than all the sermons I had ever heard put together towards thawing a little of the pitiless cynicism which encrusted my heart.

“Take the child inside, Helen, as fast as you can,” said grannie, “while I see that the boy attends to the horses. The plaguey fellow can’t be trusted any further than the length of his nose.

It was aunt Helen’s voice; she had entered and lit the lamp.

There was something beautifully sincere and real about aunt Helen.

She never fussed over anyone or pretended to sympathize just to make out how nice she was.

“I understand you, Sybylla,” she said slowly and distinctly, “but you must not be a coward. There is any amount of love and good in the world, but you must search for it.

Being misunderstood is one of the trials we all must bear.

I think that even the most common-minded person in the land has inner thoughts and feelings which no one can share with him, and the higher one’s organization the more one must suffer in that respect.

I went to bed that night greatly elated.

Flattery is sweet to youth.

I felt pleased with myself, and imagined, as I peeped in the looking-glass, that I was not half bad-looking after all.

I finished my toilet, and in a very what’s-the-good-o’-anything mood took a last glance in the glass to say, “You’re ugly, you’re ugly and useless; so don’t forget that and make a fool of yourself again.”

I was in the habit of doing this; it had long ago taken the place of a morning prayer.

I said this, that by familiarity it might lose a little of its sting when I heard it from other lips, but somehow it failed in efficacy.

“Yes; my motto with men is touch-me-not, and it is your own fault if I’m fierce.

If children attempt to act the role of a man with adult tools, they are sure to cut themselves.

Hold hard a bit, honey, till your whiskers grow,” I retorted as I departed, taking flying leaps over the blossom-burdened flowerbeds.

Ah, health and wealth, happiness and youth, joy and light, life and love!

What a warmhearted place is the world, how full of pleasure, good, and beauty, when fortune smiles!

When fortune smiles!

We all had splendid horses. They reared and pranced; we galloped and jumped every log which came in our path. Jokes, repartee, and nonsense rattled off our tongues. We did not worry about thousands of our fellows—starving and reeking with disease in city slums.

We were selfish. We were heedless. We were happy. We were young.

Harold Beecham was a splendid host. Anyone possessed of the least talent for enjoyment had a pleasant time as his guest. He was hospitable in a quiet unostentatious manner.

… golden sunset, occasionally the musical clatter of hoofs on the road, the gentle noises of the fishers fishing, the plop, plop of a platypus disporting itself mid stream, came to me as sweetest elixir in my ideal, dream-of-a-poet nook among the pink-based, grey-topped, moss-carpeted rocks.

I was a creature of joy in those days.

Life is made up of little things. It was a small thing to have a little pocket-money to spend on anything that took my fancy—a very small thing, and yet how much pleasure it gave me.

I was a creature of joy in those days.

Life is made up of little things.

It was a small thing to have a little pocket-money to spend on anything that took my fancy—a very small thing, and yet how much pleasure it gave me.

“Walk, be grannied! With two fat lazy horses to draw you?” returned Mr. Beecham.

Men are clumsy, stupid creatures regarding little things, but in their right place they are wonderful animals.

If a buggy was smashed to smithereens, from one of their many mysterious pockets they would produce a knife and some string, and put the wreck into working order in no time.

Neither will any other man. Surely you know enough of masculine human nature to see there is no danger of a man losing his heart to a plain woman like me.

Love in fancy and song is a pretty myth, embracing unity of souls, congeniality of tastes, and suchlike commodities.

In workaday reality it is the lowest of passions, which is set alight by the most artistic nose and mouth, and it matters not if its object is vile, low, or brainless to idiocy, so long as it has these attributes.”

“

Because I have been cursed with the power of seeing, thinking, and, worse than all, feeling, and branded with the stinging affliction of ugliness

,” I replied.

“For many, many reasons. He is young, and very kind and gentle. He is one of the biggest and finest-looking men you could find. He is a man whom no one could despise, for he has nothing despicable about him.

But, best of all, he is true, and that, I think, is the bedrock of all virtues.

”

“I would scorn to flirt with any man,” I returned with vigour. “Play with a man’s heart! You’d really think they had such a thing, aunt Helen, to hear you talk.

Hurt their vanity for a few days is the most a woman could do with any of them.

I am sick of this preach, preach about playing with men’s hearts. It is an old fable which should have been abolished long ago. It does not matter how a woman is played with.”

“I would scorn to flirt with any man,” I returned with vigour. “

Play with a man’s heart! You’d really think they had such a thing, aunt Helen, to hear you talk.

Hurt their vanity for a few days is the most a woman could do with any of them. I am sick of this preach, preach about playing with men’s hearts. It is an old fable which should have been abolished long ago.

This was an experience in love. He did not turn red or white, or yellow or green, nor did he tremble or stammer, or cry or laugh, or become fierce or passionate, or tender or anything but just himself, as I had always known him.

He displayed no more emotion than had he been inviting me to a picnic.

This was not as I had pictured a man would tell his love, or as I had read of it, heard of it, or wished it should be. A curious feeling—disappointment, perhaps—stole over me. His matter-of-fact coolness flabbergasted me.

He spoke as usual in his slow twangy drawl, which would have proclaimed his Colonial nationality anywhere.

No word of love was uttered to me and none requested from me.

I put it down to his conceit. I thought that he fancied he could win any woman, and me without the least palaver or trouble. I felt annoyed. I said aloud, “I will become engaged to you;”

“A less stinging rebuke would have served your purpose. I had no idea that a simple caress from the man whose proposal of marriage you had just accepted would be considered such an unpardonable familiarity.”

Harold’s voice fell clearly, calmly, cuttingly on the silence.

He moved away to the other end of the room and I heard the sound of water.

“No, thank you, aunt Gus. It is nothing,” he said carelessly, and the matter dropped.

Harold Beecham was not a man to invite inquiry concerning himself.

Seeing I was unobserved by the company, I slipped away to indulge in my foolish habit of asking the why and the wherefore of things.

As he searched in his pockets, I noticed that his eye had quite recovered, though there was still a slight mark on his cheek. He handed me a tiny morocco case, which on being opened disclosed a costly ring.

I have about as much idea of the prices of things as a turkey would have.

Perhaps that ring cost thirty pounds or possibly fifty guineas, for all I know. It was very heavy, and had a big diamond supported on either side by a large sapphire, and had many small gems surrounding it.

When halfway home I stopped, turned, looked, and saw Harold cantering smartly homewards, and heard him whistling a merry tune as he went.

After all, men are very weak and simple in some ways.

I laughed long and sardonically, apostrophizing myself thus:

“

Sybylla Penelope Melvyn, your conceit is marvellous and unparalleled!

So you actually imagined that you were of sufficient importance to assist a man through life—a strong, healthy young man too, standing six feet three and a half in his socks, a levelheaded business man, a man of high connections, spotless character, and influential friends, …

We could not very well afford it, but the poor little girl does not have many pleasures for her years.” I was smaller than Gertie, and only eleven months older; but to me it was “You must think of something besides pleasure.”

The lot of ugly girls is not joyful, and they must be possessed of natures very absurdly sanguine indeed ever to hope for any enjoyment in life.

It was cruel, base, horrible of my mother to send me to M’Swat’s. I would not go—not for 50 pounds a day! I would not go! I would not! not for any consideration.

it would have been different had I wanted to come of my own accord, and then sung out for a removal immediately; but no, against my earnest pleadings she had forced me here, and now would not heed my cry.

And to whom in all the world can we turn when our mother spurns our prayer?

There never was any sympathy between my mother and myself. We are too unlike. She is intensely matter-of-fact and practical, possessed of no ambitions or aspirations not capable of being turned into cash value.

“Pa does at any rate,” replied Jimmy.

“Yes,” said pa; “and I’m a richer man today than them as didn’t do it.”

“Liza, do not put a whole slice of bread to your mouth like that, and cram so. Cut it into small pieces.”

and this was not because they were poor, but because they did not know, or want to know, any better.

Their idea of religion, pleasure, manners, breeding, respectability, love, and everything of that ilk, was the possession of money, and their one idea of accumulating wealth was by hard sordid dragging and grinding.

A man who rises from indigence to opulence by business capabilities must have brains worthy of admiration, but the man who makes a fortune as M’Swat of Barney’s Gap was making his must be dirt mean, grasping, narrow-minded, and soulless—to me the most uncongenial of …

My curious ideas regarding human equality gave me confidence.

My theory is that the cripple is equal to the giant, and the idiot to the genius.

As, if on account of his want of strength the cripple is subservient to the giant, the latter, on account of that strength, is compelled to give in to the cripple. So with the dolt and the man of brain, so with Mrs.

Oh, how I envied them their ignorant contentment!

They were as ducks on a duck-pond; but I was as a duck forced forever to live in a desert, ever wildly longing for water, but never reaching it outside of dreams.

I longed feveredly for something to happen.

Agony is a tame word wherewith to express what that life meant to me.

Solitary confinement to a gipsy would be something on a par.

We were a quarter of a mile or so from the house, so Peter slackened his speed that I might keep pace with him. His knowledge of etiquette did not extend as far as dismounting.

There is a great difference between rudeness and ignorance. Peter was not rude; he was merely ignorant.

For the same reason he let his mother feed the pigs, clean his boots, and chop wood, while he sat down and smoked and spat. It was not that he was unmanly, as that this was the only manliness he had known.

There is a great difference between rudeness and ignorance. Peter was not rude; he was merely ignorant. For the same reason he let his mother feed the pigs, clean his boots, and chop wood, while he sat down and smoked and spat.

It was not that he was unmanly, as that this was the only manliness he had known.

I was alone in the schoolroom next afternoon when Mr. M’Swat sidled in, and after stuttering and hawing a little, delivered himself of:

he worked away from morning till night, and contentedly did his duty like a bullock in the sphere in which God had placed him; he never had a bath while I knew him, and was a man according to his lights.

He knew there was such a thing as the outside world, as I know there is such a thing as algebra; but it troubled him no more than algebra troubles me.

This was my estimation of Peter M’Swat, junior.

But I could not help it that their life was warping my very soul.

Nature fashions us all; we have no voice in the matter, and I could not change my organisation to one which would find sufficient sustenance in the mental atmosphere of Barney’s Gap.

“Oh, were I seated high as my ambition, I’d place this loot on naked necks of monarchs!”

At the time of my departure for Caddagat my father had been negotiating with beer regarding the sale of his manhood; on returning I found that he had completed the bargain, and held a stamped receipt in his miserable appearance and demeanour.

In the broken-down man, regardless of manners, one would have failed to recognize Dick Melvyn, “Smart Dick Melvyn,” “Jolly-good-fellow Melvyn” “Thorough Gentleman” and “Manly Melvyn” of the handsome face and ingratiating manners, onetime holder of Bruggabrong, Bin Bin East, and Bin Bin West.

I comforted her with the assurance that the only thing was to feel right within ourselves, and let people say whatsoever entertained their poor little minds.

And I fell asleep thinking that parents have a duty to children greater than children to parents, and they who do not fulfil their responsibility in this respect are as bad in their morals as a debauchee, corrupt the community as much as a thief, and are among the ablest underminers of their nation.

On the morrow, the first time we were alone, Horace seized the opportunity of holding forth on his woes. It was no use, he was choke full of Possum Gully:

but I would set him at his ease, and we would laugh together re what he would term our foolish young days, and he would like me in a brotherly way. Yes, that was how it would be. The tiny note blackened in the flames.

So much for my romance of love! It had ended in a bottle of smoke, as all my other dreams of life bid fair to do.

I think I was not fully aware how near I had been to loving Harold Beecham until experiencing the sense of loss which stole over me on holding in my hand the acceptance of his dismissal.

On recognizing me his silence grew profound, but an unmistakable expression of pity filled his eyes and stung me to the quick.

I have a faculty of self-pity, but my pride promptly refuses the slightest offer of sympathy from another.

I could feel my heart grow as bitterly cold as my demeanour was icily stiff, when I stood up and said curtly:

“Marry Gertie! Why, she’s only a child! A mere baby, in fact. Marry Gertie! I never thought of her in that light; and did you think I was that sort of a fellow, Syb?” he asked reproachfully.

“No, Hal,” I promptly made answer. “I did not think you were that sort of fellow; but I thought that was the only sort of fellow there was.”

“Good heavens, Syb! Did you really mean those queer little letters you wrote me last February? I never for an instant looked upon them as anything but a little bit of playful contrariness. And have you forgotten me?

“Yes,” he said, “that is why I want you. Just think a moment; don’t say no. You are not vexed with me—are you, Syb?”

“Vexed, Hal! I am scarcely inhuman enough to be angry on account of being loved.”

Ah, why did I not love him as I have it in me to love! Why did he look so exasperatingly humble? I was weak, oh, so pitifully weak!