Happy Birthday Joseph Furphy!

The two greatest supra-physical pleasures of life are antithetical in operation. One is to have something to do, and know that you are doing it deftly and honestly. The other is to have nothing to do, and to know that you are carrying out your blank programme like a good and faithful menial.

Age cannot limit him, nor use exhaust his infinite mendacity.

The successful pioneer is the man who never spared others; the forgotten pioneer is the man who never speared himself, but, being a fool built houses for wise men to live in, and omitted to gather moss. The former is the early bird; the latter is the early worm.
Joseph Furphy Such is Life.

Such is life, my fellow-mummers—just like a poor player that bluffs and feints his hour upon the stage, and then cheapens down to mere nonentity. But let me not hear any small witticism to the further effect that its story is a tale told by a vulgarian, full of slang and blanky, signifying—nothing. 

'English fair play' is a fine expression. It justifies the bashing of the puny draper's assistant by the big hairy blacksmith, and this to the perfect satisfaction of both parties, if they are worthy the name of Englishman.

I have just finished writing a full-size novel: Title, “Such is Life”; scene, Riverina and northern Vic; temper, democratic; bias, offensively Australian.

Who can control his fate? asks the ruined Othello. No one, indeed. But everyone controls his option, chooses his alternative. 

I compare tracking to reading a letter in a good business hand. You mustn’t look at what’s your eyes; you must see a lot at once, and keep a general grasp of what’s ahead, besides spotting each track you pass.

It is not in our cities or townships, it is not in our agricultural or mining areas, that the Australian attains full consciousness of his own nationality; it is in places like this, and as clearly here as at the centre of the continent. To me the monotonous variety of this interminable scrub has a charm of its own; so grave, subdued, self centred; so alien to the genial appeal of more winsome landscape, or the assertive grandeur of mountain and gorge. 

Unemployed at last!