Henry Lawson > Quotes

“Beer makes you feel the way you ought to feel without beer.”
― Henry Lawson

“Oh, my ways are strange ways and new ways and old ways, And deep ways and steep ways and high ways and low, I'm at home and at ease on a track that I know not, And restless and lost on a road that I know.”
― Henry Lawson

“Grey eyes that grow sadder than sunset or rain,
Fond heart that is ever more true
Firm faith that grows firmer for watching in vain---
She’ll wait by the sliprails for you.”
― Henry Lawson

“We fight it down, and we live it down, or we bear it bravely well,
But the best men die of a broken heart for the things they cannot tell.”
― Henry Lawson, When I Was King and Other Verses

“here is nothing to see, however, and not a soul to meet. You might walk for twenty miles along this track without being able to fix a point in your mind, unless you are a bushman. This is because of the everlasting, maddening sameness of the stunted trees - that monotony which makes a man long to break away and travel as far as trains can go, and sail as far as ship can sail - and farther.”
― Henry Lawson, The Drover's Wife

“Do you think now and then, now or then, in the whirl
Of the city, while London is new,
Of the hut in the Bush, and the freckled-faced girl
Who is eating her heart out for you?”
― Henry Lawson

“The fields are fair in autumn yet, and the sun's still shining there, but we bow our heads and we brood and fret, because of the masks we wear, Or we nod and smile the social while, and we say we're doing well, But we break our herts! For the things we must not tell.”
― Henry Lawson

“I was human, very human, and if in the days misspent
I have injured man or woman, it was done without intent.
If at times I blundered blindly — bitter heart and aching brow —
If I wrote a line unkindly — I am sorry for it now.”
― Henry Lawson

“Ah! The world is a new and a wide one to you,
But the world to your sweetheart is shut,
For a change never comes to the lonely Bush girl
From the stockyard, the bush, and the hut;
And the only relief from the dullness she feels
Is when ridges grow softened and dim,
And away in the dusk to the sliprails she steals
To dream of past meetings with him.”
― Henry Lawson

“And the sun sank again on the grand Australian bush - the nurse and tutor of eccentric minds, the home of the weird, and of much that is different from things in other lands.”
― Henry Lawson, While the Billy Boils

“And, as I sit here writing by lamplight at midday, in the midst of a great city of shallow social sham, of hopeless, squalid poverty, of ignorant selfishness, cultured or brutish, and of noble and heroic endeavour frowned down or callously neglected, I am almost aware of a burst of sunshine in the room, and a long form leaning over my chair, and: "Excuse me for troublin' yer; I'm always troublin' yer; but there's that there poor woman...." And I wish I could immortalize him!”
― Henry Lawson, Children of the Bush