Bendigo Shafter Quotes

My stories may seem to be the stories of men, but a check of my books will show that I have probably written the stories of more strong women than any other writer ... [examples include] Miss Nesselrode of The Lonesome Gods, Ruth Macken of Bendigo Shafter, Echo Sackett of Ride the River, Em Talon of Ride the Dark Trail are some ... [and] one of my favorites is Miss Jessica Trescott of Matagorda. (The Sackett Companion) ~ Louis L'Amour

Nobody got anywhere in this world by simply being content. ~ Bendigo Shafter By Louis L'Amour

No. Until man can order his own affairs, until he ceases to prey on his brothers, he will need someone to maintain order. A lawman is not a restraint, but a freedom, a liberation. He restrains only those who would break the laws and provides freedom for the rest of us to work, to laugh, to sing, to play in peace. ~ Louis L'Amour

I want to give just a slight indication of the influence the book has had. I knew that George Orwell, in his second novel, A Clergyman's Daughter , published in 1935, had borrowed from Joyce for his nighttime scene in Trafalgar Square, where Deafie and Charlie and Snouter and Mr. Tallboys and The Kike and Mrs. Bendigo and the rest of the bums and losers keep up a barrage of song snatches, fractured prayers, curses, and crackpot reminiscences. But only on my most recent reading of Ulysses did I discover, in the middle of the long and intricate mock-Shakespeare scene at the National Library, the line 'Go to! You spent most of it in Georgina Johnson's bed, clergyman's daughter.' So now I think Orwell quarried his title from there, too. ~ Christopher Hitchens

An emotional man with bushy eyebrows tells us that if the proposed mosque is built in Bendigo 'the foundation of Australia will be lost forever'. His first example: Muslims sometimes pray on the street outside the mosque.

'They block off the entire street!' he shouts. 'And I ask you today, if you've got a child at home with an egg or nut allergy and they go into anaphylactic shock, how is the ambulance care going to get to that child?'

The dastardly Muslims–peanut allergy connection!

You really can reverse-park anything into your belief system. ~ John Safran

Marshall Shafter ... kept pasted in his desk drawer a piece of paper he looked at from time to time to remind himself of something. It said, A fool can put on his own clothes better than wise man can do it for him. ~ Jane Jacobs