Owen

“The Australian aborigines, reckoned to be among the most primitive of races upon evidence that is far from conclusive, have a region that is well-developed. They worship the Earth Mother, and recognise in their graceful, plaintive stories the prior existence of culture heroes as well limned as any in Valhalla. To an amazing degree they feel the reality of the metaphysical world they have created––the dream-time, which is neither a dream nor a period, or if it is a period is one which has no dimension, so that the past and the present exist together.”
― Olaf Ruhen, Tangaroa's Godchild

“But alas! Firemen [stoking a ship] are not what they were. The gor-blimey firemen of the coal-burning days must, I think, be a diminishing species and in these degenerate times, when ships burn oil, the firemen is rapidly becoming a perfect gentleman, which is a pity …. Yet all was not quite lost in 1932, since one of them, … finding an altercation with the cook becoming beyond his powers of argument, upheld tradition and ‘drew him off a Burton.’ In other words, he knocked him out for the count.”
― F. D, Ommanney

“She was highly gifted in the art of human intercourse which consists in delicate shades of self-forgetfulness and in the suggestion of universal comprehension.”
― Joseph Conrad, Nostromo

“As politicians know all too well, even a Government that does not represent the wishes of a people can count on their support once the nation is locked in conflict with an external foe.”
― Elisabeth Hoemberg, Thy People My People