Julia Baird > Quotes

“It has been conservatively estimated that Victoria wrote an average of two and a half thousand words per day during her reign, a total of approximately sixty million words.”
― Julia Baird, Victoria The Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire

“Victoria’s head ached under a heavy crown, and her hand throbbed—the ruby coronation ring had been jammed onto the wrong finger; it was later, painfully, removed with ice. Around her stood her older male advisers, in a state of disrepair. Her prime minister was half-stoned with opium and brandy, ostensibly taken to calm his stomach, and he viewed the entire ceremony in a fog. Her archbishop, having failed to rehearse, jumbled his lines. One of her lords tumbled down the steps when he approached to kiss her hand. But Victoria’s composure was impeccable. Her voice was cool, silvery, and steady.”
― Julia Baird, Victoria The Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire

“All the early stages took place in water: the origin of life; the birth of animals, the evolution of nervous systems and brains, and the appearance of complex bodies that makes brains worth having [...] When animals did crawl onto dry land, they took the sea with them. All the basic activities of life occur in water-filled cells bounded by membranes, tiny containers whose insides are remnants of the sea.”
― Julia Baird, Phosphorescence: On Awe, Wonder and Things That Sustain You When the World Goes Dark

“She just wants the world to know she was a hurricane and not a zephyr.”
― Julia Baird, Phosphorescence

“In greeting each morning remind yourself of Dadirri by blessing yourself with the following; "Let tiny drops of stillness fall gently through my day".”
― Julia Baird, Phosphorescence: On Awe, Wonder and Things That Sustain You When the World Goes Dark

“In Australia, the dawn is an arsonist who pours petrol along the horizon, throws a match on it and watches it burn.”
― Julia Baird, Phosphorescence: On Awe, Wonder and Things That Sustain You When the World Goes Dark

“Seek awe and nature daily... show kindness; practise grace; eschew vanity; be bold; embrace friends, family, faith and doubt, imperfection and mess; and live deliberately.”
― Julia Baird, Phosphorescence: On Awe, Wonder and Things That Sustain You When the World Goes Dark

“The sublime Academy Award winning actor, Halle Berry, told a group of reporters in London in 2004 when she was promoting Cat Woman, "Being thought of as a beautiful woman has spared me nothing in life. No heartache, no trouble. Love has been difficult. Beauty is essentially meaningless and it is always transitory".”
― Julia Baird, Phosphorescence: On Awe, Wonder and Things That Sustain You When the World Goes Dark

“In short: when we are exposed to sunlight, trees, water or even just a view of green leaves, we become happier, healthier and stronger. People living in green spaces have more energy and a stronger sense of purpose, and being able to see green spaces from your home is associated with reduced cravings for alcohol, cigarettes and harmful foods.”
― Julia Baird, Phosphorescence

“There are few things as startling as encountering an unearthly glow in the wild. Glow-worms. Ghost mushrooms. Fireflies. Flashlight fish. Lantern sharks. Vampire squid. Our forest floors and ceilings, our ocean depths and fringes are full of luminous beings, creatures lit from the inside. And they have, for many centuries, enchanted us, like glowing missionaries of wonder, emissaries of awe.
Is there anything more beautiful than living light?”
― Julia Baird, Phosphorescence: On Awe, Wonder and Things That Sustain You When the World Goes Dark

“the top hat was now considered the mark of a gentleman, even though the first man to sport one in public, forty years earlier, was arrested on the grounds that it had “a shiny luster calculated to alarm timid people.” (Four women had fainted upon seeing it, and pedestrians had booed.) Lord”
― Julia Baird, Victoria the Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman who Changed the World

“a girl who was bullied by those closest to her until her determination set like concrete;”
― Julia Baird, Victoria the Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire

“on June 20, 1837, the destiny of a nation wheeled, spun, and came to rest on the small frame of an eighteen-year-old girl. A girl who read Charles Dickens, worried about the welfare of Gypsies, adored animals, loved to sing opera, was fascinated with lion tamers, and hated insects and turtle soup; a girl who was bullied by those closest to her until her determination set like concrete; a girl whose heart was wound tight with cords of sentiment and stoicism.”
― Julia Baird, Victoria the Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire

“our bodies, our misshapen, lumpy, wobbly, birth-marked, uneven, scarred, imperfect bodies are our vessels. If only we were more gracious towards them. They won't last forever, they will eventually grow frail, we will miss the strength and vigour of our younger selves. But, for now, when alive, when upright, when walking through days with purpose, without pain, they are vessels for adventure, for sleep, for song, for dance, and a place where we experience joy.”
― Julia Baird, Bright Shining: How Grace Changes Everything

“young, old, British or foreign, the entire”
― Julia Baird, Victoria the Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman who Changed the World

“So much of what is broadly called wellness now involves an expensive kind of burrowing into our selves, wobbling on the plank between self-care and self-obsession. Many get lost in the labyrinth of internal observation, an endless cycle of maintenance of muscle, mood and self-medication.”
― Julia Baird

“It can take a while, sometimes, to be the woman you want to be, and to excavate the misogyny or critical eye we too often internalise”
― Julia Baird, Phosphorescence

“When our days are shadowed and leached of meaning, when circumstances shower us with mud, how can we be sure to re-emit lessons we absorb in the sunlight?”
― Julia Baird, Phosphorescence

“sent clothes for the refugees and lent them”
― Julia Baird, Victoria the Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire

“court circles too. Melbourne was now fully aware of the rift, even though the duchess had begged Victoria not to tell him, but did nothing to bridge it. Victoria started to pity her depressed mother. It was a fool’s mission, but the loyal duchess continued to try to rehabilitate Conroy. In November, she asked Victoria to allow him to come to the Guildhall banquet. If Victoria did not like him, then she asked her to “at least forgive, and do not exclude and mark him and his family.” She continued: “The”
― Julia Baird, Victoria the Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire

“Instead, I just prayed to God. And I think”
― Julia Baird, Phosphorescence

“I was trying to challenge the Sydney Anglican Church’s oppression of women, a church I had begun attending with my family when I was ten. This was a church that still told women to be silent, to not speak when men were present, to submit to male authority. A church that tried to rebrand and prettify patriarchy, to pretend it was not ancient but countercultural, resisting the sinful pull of modern feminism. A church many of my friends fled. For those who stayed, there was comfort and community but often a cost — one uniquely talented friend told me when she accepted her husband’s proposal that she had somehow prayed away her sin of ambition.”
― Julia Baird, Phosphorescence

“Know this, too: You deserve love. Real, enduring love. Buckets of it. Love is the greatest high on Earth. But remember Proverbs 4:23: “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.”
― Julia Baird, Phosphorescence: A Memoir of Finding Joy When Your World Goes Dark

“Grace is honouring another person' humanity, even when they don't honour yours. Grace is extending a hand, even when a fist might be more deserved.”
― Julia Baird, Bright Shining: How Grace Changes Everything

“beings”
― Julia Baird, Bright Shining

“(As he once told her, “a long closely connected train of reasoning is like a beautiful strain of music.”)”
― Julia Baird, Victoria the Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire

“McCarthy insists if we delight in nature and find joy there, we will not so carelessly plunder, neglect and destroy it. He calls it 'defence through joy'.”
― Julia Baird, Phosphorescence: On Awe, Wonder and Things That Sustain You When the World Goes Dark

“stranglehold on women in my conservative hometown of Sydney was tightening. Young girls brimming with hormones were warned not to tempt men with the way we dressed. We were told to marry young and submit to our husbands. We were cautioned against the distraction of social justice, about the evils of ambition, the selfishness of career, the ugliness of feminism. There was a puritanical bent to much of the controlling advice; the need for women to be modest, how just holding hands could be a gateway to sex. I was spoken to once because I had danced for several hours at a party, which was, apparently, evidence of my ‘love of the pleasures of this world’. But the worst thing a woman could be, a friendly leader told me, was opinionated.”
― Julia Baird, Phosphorescence

“Dacher Keltner and Jonathain Haidt wrote: ‘Two appraisals are central and are present in all clear cases of awe: perceived vastness, and a need for accommodation, defined as an inability to assimilate an experience into current mental structures.”
― Julia Baird, Phosphorescence

“While so much of our self-exploration today is hash-tagged #wellness and performed for all to see, it became obvious to me in the far reach of sacred lands, encircled by campfires and eucalypts, that sometimes the best way to pay attention to country is to keep your mouth shut, open your eyes and just listen.”
― Julia Baird, Phosphorescence