“Our ruined rhymes are not likely to last long, but if there is any hope at all of survival it comes from the fact that such writers as Lawson and myself had the advantage of writing in a new country.”

Suggesting that literary survival may depend as much on historical circumstance as artistic greatness · Retrospective prose essay, Looking Backward

• Fame
• Hope
• Poetry

“Military appointments were like the Order of the Garter — there was no damned merit about them.”

Mocking privilege and the absence of merit in military advancement · Boer War reminiscence

• Truth
• War

“The lecturing is not so bad but the lonely travelling is awful. Anyhow the money is good which is the main thing.”

Balancing an honest admission of loneliness with practical good humour · Letter to George Robertson from Launceston, circa 1900

• Fame
• Solitude

“The fact is that all well-bred horses were too delicate to stand starvation, sickness and mismanagement.”

Condemning the suffering caused by military neglect rather than by the demands of service alone · Essay on horses and remounts during the Boer War

• Mortality
• Nature
• War

“This appeals to me very much, the only trouble being to write the stuff well enough.”

Revealing the modest self-doubt that accompanied his enthusiasm for a new project · Letter to Major W. T. Conder, 12 December 1934

• Art
• Truth

“I meet all sorts of people from Field Marshals to buffalo shooters and I would like to try getting interviews with them and working in as much information as possible about their lives.”

Expressing his fascination with lives and experiences drawn from every level of society · Letter to Major W. T. Conder, 17 November 1934

• Art
• Memory
• Truth

“All joking apart, the work is hard, monotonous, and dangerous, and the men deserve every credit. I don't think the world ever saw such a lot of horsemen got together as I have in my squadron.”

Paying sincere tribute to the courage and horsemanship of the men under his command · Letter to George Robertson from Egypt during the First World War

• Courage
• Friendship
• War

“In private life he was just a hard-working commonsense, level-headed man, without any redeeming vices, less of a quack, less of a showman, and less of a time-server than any public man I ever met.”

Praising Kipling's disciplined character while gently mocking conventional celebrity · Published reminiscence of Rudyard Kipling

• Fame
• Friendship
• Truth

“England and Australia are the two extremes in political matters. Here a general may half wreck an Empire and no one does anything.”

Satirising the striking difference between British and Australian political accountability · Letter from London, December 1901

• Truth
• War

“People seem to me to take racing so gloomily. One could make it very funny without much effort and it would point a good moral as I could show the folly of betting.”

Proposing humour as a way to expose the foolishness surrounding gambling · Letter to George Robertson, 7 January 1910

• Joy
• Truth

“My health is quite restored now. I used not to be able to sleep, now I can't keep awake.”

Turning a report of recovered health into a characteristically dry joke · Letter to George Robertson, 7 January 1910

• Health
• Joy

“I am very dissatisfied with the thing; and am afraid I will have to do it over again to make it readable. The style is so stiff.”

Showing his willingness to judge his own prose severely and revise it · Letter to George Robertson, 15 December 1919

• Art
• Truth

“Where Shelley wrote the song of the skylark our poets have written the wail of the curlew.”

Contrasting European lyricism with the melancholy voice of Australian poetry · Australian Local Colour, radio script written for the Australian Broadcasting Commission, 1934

• Despair
• Nature
• Poetry

“In a literary sense, we are at the bullock-dray stage of development while older nations are, or should be flying literary aeroplanes.”

Humorously measuring young Australian literature against older traditions · Australian Local Colour, radio script written for the Australian Broadcasting Commission, 1934

• Art
• Poetry

“I hope to rescue these rough bush ballads from oblivion.”

Defining his mission to preserve Australia's disappearing folk tradition · Introduction to Old Bush Songs, 1905

• Memory
• Music
• Poetry

“Banjo was the name of a horse I once rode. I was at a loss for a signature for my first contribution, not wishing to put my own name, and Banjo being in my mind at the time, I just slapped that down.”

Giving his characteristically unceremonious account of how his famous pen-name arose · Interview with Bernard Espinasse, Table Talk, 31 January 1896

• Fame
• Memory

“You can't write about a thing unless you know it thoroughly, or at least, you shouldn't.”

Affirming that credible writing must be grounded in genuine knowledge · Interview with Bernard Espinasse, Table Talk, 31 January 1896

• Art
• Poetry
• Truth

“I don't know that I'm wholly satisfied with any of my work. I always think I can do better.”

Expressing the creative restlessness that drives an artist to improve · Interview with Bernard Espinasse, Table Talk, 31 January 1896

• Art
• Poetry

“I am very particular about my work. It is not enough for me that a line scans correctly, or that it even contains a thought, it must satisfy me.”

Revealing the exacting craftsmanship behind his apparently effortless verse · Interview with Bernard Espinasse, Table Talk, 31 January 1896

• Art
• Poetry

“You see, I understand them and their lives, and they know it.”

Explaining the bond between his writing and the people of the Australian bush · Interview with Bernard Espinasse, Table Talk, 31 January 1896

• Poetry
• Truth