Miles Franklin Quotes

I had been poor myself, and knew what awaited him in the world. He would find that they who fawned on him most would be first to turn their backs on him now. He would be rudely disillusioned regarding the fables of love and friendship, and would become cynical, bitter, and sceptical of there being any disinterested good in human nature. ~ Miles Franklin

It is a wise provision that youth cannot see what it owes the previous generation. This is a chicken that comes back to roost in heavier years. ~ Miles Franklin

Women can always think as much as they like, an' they could get up on a platform an' talk till they bust, as long as they didn't want the world to be made no better, an' they wouldn't be thought unwomanly. It's soon as a woman wants any practical good done that she is considered a unwomanly creature. ~ Miles Franklin

What I absorbed from autobiographies was not how to be great so much as the littleness of the great. ~ Miles Franklin

Our greatest heart-treasure is a knowledge that there is in creation an individual to whom our existence is necessary - some one who is part of our life as we are part of theirs, some one in whose life we feel assured our death would leave a gap for a day or two. ~ Miles Franklin

A woman writer, except in rare instances, has no protection such as enjoyed by men who use their wives and mistresses as a marline to save themselves from the wear and tear of interruption. ~ Miles Franklin

I am afflicted with the power of thought, which is a heavy curse. The less a person thinks and inquires regarding the why and the wherefore and the justice of things, when dragging along through life, the happier it is for him, and doubly, trebly so, for her. ~ Miles Franklin

Cowards always drag in the Bible to back theirselves up far more than proper people does ... ~ Miles Franklin

Knitting is not enough. ~ Miles Franklin

Only a very small percentage can regard conditions from any but a selfish point of view or conceive of any but their own shoe-pinch. ~ Miles Franklin

This is not a romance - I have too often faced the music of life to the tune of hardship to waste time in snivelling and gushing over fancies and dreams [author's introduction] ~ Miles Franklin

If the souls of lives were voiced in music, there are some that none but a great organ could express, others the clash of a full orchestra, a few to which nought but the refined and exquisite sadness of a violin could do justice. Many might be likened unto common pianos, jangling and out of tune, and some to the feeble piping of a penny whistle, and mine could be told with a couple of nails in a rusty tin-pot. ~ Miles Franklin

The way to wean any one from a desire is not by condemnation of it. ~ Miles Franklin

Bravely you jog along with the rope of class distinction drawing closer, close, tighter, tighter around you ... I see it and know it, but I cannot help you ... I am only an unnecessary, little, bush commoner, I am only a - woman. ~ Miles Franklin

When an emergency arose that necessiated Uncle Jay-Jay to shoe a horse himself, I always manipulated the bellows. He was always so exacting that I did it with great decorum, fearing his displeasure.

This case was different.

I worked the pole with such energy that it nearly blew the fire out of the pan, and sent ashes and sparks in a whirlwind around Harold.

"That the way to blow?" I asked demurely.
"Take things a little easier," He replied.

I took them so easily that the fire was on its last gasp and the shoe was almost cold when required.

"This won't do," Said Harry.

I recommenced with such force that he had to retreat.

"Steady! Steady!" He shouted.
"Sure, O'i can't plaze yez anyhows," I replied ~ Miles Franklin

It's a sign of your own worth sometimes if you are hated by the right people. ~ Miles Franklin

There are only two kinds of parents. Those who think their offspring can do nothing wrong, and those who think they can do nothing right. ~ Miles Franklin

life itself is anything beyond a heartless little chimera- it is as real in its weariness and bitter heartache ~ Miles Franklin

It ain't what things actually are, it's all they stand for. ~ Miles Franklin

I early became conscious that men breathe more audibly than women. Sit in a room in silence with men and women, and you can always hear the men breathing. ~ Miles Franklin

We each have our fleeting hour. ~ Miles Franklin

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. ~ Miles Franklin

Someone to tell it to is one of the fundamental needs of human beings. ~ Miles Franklin

No problem except old age ever vanquished my mother. ~ Miles Franklin

There is a law of retribution in all things, direct or indirect, visible or invisible. ~ Miles Franklin

I never can see why they make such a fuss and get so frightened because wimmen does a thing or two now they usedn't to. Nothing short of a earthquake can make them not men an' wimmmen, an' that's the main thing. ~ Miles Franklin

Heed the spark or you may dread the fire ... ~ Miles Franklin

I don't believe there is a God", I said fiercely, "and if there is, He's not the merciful being He's always depicted, or He wouldn't be always torturing me for His own amusement. ~ Miles Franklin

People who are wrapped up in themselves make small packages. ~ Benjamin Franklin

There is no fate, only free will, and we were just in the way of other people's free will when they decided to do the Devil's work. People are doing the Devil's work everywhere you go; there's no avoiding it unless you go live on a mountaintop somewhere, a hundred miles from everyone. ~ Dean Koontz

Life biggest tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late ~ Benjamin Franklin

never seen real darkness, not in the city, but how, if you stood peeing off the cabin porch on a moonless night, or took a walk through the woods where the treetops stitched out the stars, you could almost forget you were there, you felt invisible. Country dark, his mother called it. ~ Tom Franklin

People have always said - those words, 'too conservative,' is fairly relative. I'm sure that they probably said that about Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. ~ Sharron Angle

R&B is not a fad; it's the truth. ~ Aretha Franklin

You say that every morning."
Miles shrugged. "You're late every morning."
"Then wake me up sooner."
"I have a better idea - why don't you go to sleep when I tell you to?"
"I'm not tired then. I'm only tired in the mornings."
"Join the club. ~ Nicholas Sparks

Yesterday in his hospital room my husband asked urgently, "Will you move me twenty-six thousand miles to the left?""Yes," I said, not moving from my chair. After a moment he said, "Thank you," adding in wonder, "I didn't feel a thing. ~ Abigail Thomas

Benjamin Franklin said, "Those things that hurt, instruct. ~ M. Scott Peck

Comrades! The kulak uprising in your five districts must be crushed without pity. You must make example of these people. (1) Hang (I mean hang publicly, so that people see it) at least 100 kulaks, rich bastards, and known bloodsuckers. (2) Publish their names. (3) Seize all their grain. (4) Single out the hostages per my instructions in yesterday's telegram. Do all this so that for miles around people see it all, understand it, tremble, and tell themselves that we are killing the bloodthirsty kulaks and that we will continue to do so ... Find tougher people. ~ Vladimir Lenin

This quick foray onto the toilet has been no different an endeavor than any other time I've used the restroom in my adult life. Try then to imagine my surprise when instead of the waste going down the u-bend like the thousands of times previous, the bowl's contents go not gentle into that good night.
Instead, they shoot directly up at me ... at approximately 80 miles an hour.
As I leap backward, slamming into the glass shower door, the only thought going through my now-banged head is, When did I eat corn?
Pretty in Plaid: A Life, a Witch, and a Wardrobe, or, the Wonder Years Before the Condescending, Egomanical, Self-Centered Smart-Ass Phase ~ Jen Lancaster

In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Fame had been democratized. During most of history only members of the privileged classes had possessed a realistic opportunity to achieve majestic fame, but in the eighteenth century it has been demonstrated repeatedly, by men such as Franklin, for instance, that fame might be achieved by men born into a lesser social rank. ~ John Ferling

When they searched my car, they said that they found a gasoline canister and I think duct tape. Who wouldn't have a gasoline canister on them when driving 3,000 miles across country? ~ Sherman Austin

I think of Twitter as a messaging system that you didn't know you needed until you had it. Think about when cell phones first started coming out. People said, "Why would I carry my phone around?" And now you'll drive back to your house thirty miles if you forget your cell phone. ~ Biz Stone

Of course he enticed them!" "Well now," said the sergeant, propping his bicycle carefully against one of our pumps. "This is a very hinterestin' haccusation, very hinterestin' indeed, because I hain't never 'eard of nobody hen-ticin' a pheasant across six miles of fields and open countryside. 'Ow do you think this hen-ticin' was performed, Mr. 'Azell, if I may hask?" "Don't ask me how he did it because I don't know!" shouted Mr. Hazell. "But he's done it all right! The proof is all around you! All my finest birds are sitting here in this dirty little filling station when they ought to be up in my own wood getting ready for the shoot!" The words poured out of Mr. Hazell's mouth like hot lava from an erupting volcano. "Am I correct," said Sergeant Samways, "am I habsolutely haccurate in thinkin' that today is the day of your great shootin' party, Mr. 'Azell? ~ Roald Dahl

I was the director of my life, it was already true, and I would soon lead myself to my dreamed-of destinations.

It was the task of my one thousand miles of solitude. ~ Aspen Matis

I've seen the devil of violence, and the devil of greed, and the devil of hot desire; but, by all the stars! these were strong, lusty, red-eyed devils, that swayed and drove men - men, I tell you. But as I stood on this hillside, I foresaw that in the blinding sunshine of that land I would become acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly. How insidious he could be, too, I was only to find out several months later and a thousand miles farther. ~ Joseph Conrad

Peace is a journey of a thousand miles and it must be taken one step at a time. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

Light, so low upon earth,
You send a flash to the sun.
Here is the golden close of love,
All my wooing is done.
Oh, all the woods and the meadows,
Woods, where we hid from the wet,
Stiles where we stayed to be kind,
Meadows in which we met!
Light, so low in the vale
You flash and lighten afar,
For this is the golden morning of love,
And you are his morning star.
Flash, I am coming, I come,
By meadow and stile and wood,
Oh, lighten into my eyes and my heart,
Into my heart and my blood!
Heart, are you great enough
For a love that never tires?
O heart, are you great enough for love?
I have heard of thorns and briers.
Over the thorns and briers,
Over the meadows and stiles,
Over the world to the end of it
Flash of a million miles. ~ Alfred Tennyson

The essence of our struggle is that men shall be free. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Vice knows [its] ugly, so [it] puts on [a] mask. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Away down the river,
A hundred miles or more,
Other little children
Shall bring my boats ashore. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

For me, music and life are all about style. ~ Miles Davis

There is nothing wrong with retirement as long as one doesn't allow it to interfere with one's work. ~ Benjamin Franklin

New York City has more rock history in its 305 square miles than most of America combined. ~ Shawn Amos

Gospel goes with me wherever I go. Gospel is a constant with me. ~ Aretha Franklin

All of us in all the Americas will be living at the point of a gun. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Speak with contempt of none, from slave to king, The meanest Bee hath, and will use, a sting. ~ Benjamin Franklin

He that can have patience can have what he will. ~ Benjamin Franklin

I am rather ashamed to admit that my knowledge of the Ice Age in Canada is very little, mostly because much of it was under ice until about 10,000 years ago. I am very sure we still had beavers. I am also equally sure we still had Tim Horton's, a prehistoric edifice which has a coffee blend that can only be described as fossilized. ~ Michelle Franklin

The writer ... an athlete required to break the four-minute mile every morning. ~ Irving Stone