Christina Stead Quotes
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He talks about human equality, the rights of man, nothing but that. How about the rights of woman, I’d like to scream at him. It’s fine to be a great democrat when you’ve a slave to rub your boots on.
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She knows that soon she will have escaped into the world of the people better than us, the great objective world better than Shakespeare and Beethoven and Donatello put together—didn’t they all come out of it?
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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?
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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.
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Creation of something out of nothing is the most primitive of human passions and the most optimistic
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And the three women, after crying, felt united in a love.
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The light of the years to come, to me; and the law would give them into your charge because you are their mother, no matter what kind of a woman you are.
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If all the rich people in the world divided up their money among themselves, there wouldn't be enough to go around.
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About the girls she only thought of marriage, and about marriage she thought as an ignorant, dissatisfied, but helpless slave did of slavery.
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Loneliness is a terrible blindness.
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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.”
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Old age is perhaps life's decision about us ...
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All men are dogs
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They never asked any reasons for their parents’ fights, thinking all adults unreasonable, violent beings, the toys of their own monstrous tempers and egotisms
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When a woman hates, she will wreck a dozen lives to pay back what she conceives to be some injury.
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All the best gods are made of stone and say nothing.
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When he was away she could stand him, and the farther he was away the more she could stand him!
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Perhaps I have made a mistake, but Heaven knows I have been faithful to my marriage vows.” She chuckled, “The more fool you!
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I will never let the vestal fire go out in my innermost recesses’: people feel that vestal fire and they feel that its possessor is sacred: they will not harm him. He walks unharmed amongst people reputed savage because they honor what is most good in man.
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You see when a man knows he will be old, he is afraid: when he becomes old, he cares for nothing - love does not count, only comfort; honor does not count, only cheating for a niche.
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Who tarnishes, assaults, threatens, hates the spirit of man is guilty of crime.
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Hair under the arms, for example, he said, should never be removed, for nature had put it there, and evidently it had some use. She had suddenly said, “You have too many children, Mr. Pollit.
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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.
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I know,” he said with sudden bitterness, “because your mother’s game is working after all. She is turning you against me.” “No,” said Louie. He looked at her pityingly, “No, I know you don’t know it, Looloo.