C. J. Dennis

“Professional gardeners are usually rather earthy uncommunicative men with a deliberate manner, a slight stoop and the dull-fish-like eye of the confirmed pessimist.”

“But it must not be thought that I abjure all physical effort. Only the day before yesterday I pulled up a dandelion. Next week I shall probably be busy pulling up the two other dandelions that will inevitably spring up in that place to avenge their brother. Dandelions are like that.”

“They say the whole world’s down and out;  But here’s what I can’t see:If every land, beyond all doubt,In all the earth is up the spout—  Then who's the mortgagee?”

“To mock the tree-lined highways of our dreaming,  Winding to pleasant plains and sunlit hills,Loud-speakers yet may blare 'mid billboards screaming  To hymn the praise of someone’s priceless pills.”

“Now, a woman, she’s a woman. I ’ave fixed that for a cert.They’re jist as like as rows uv peas from ’at to ’em uv skirt.An’ then, they’re all so different, yeh find, before yeh’ve done,The more yeh know uv all uv ’em the less yeh know uv one.”

“Oh, to be in England  Now that Summer’s there!For who plays the Game in England  Is each morning well awareThat the cricket-pitch is water-logged,And the in-field’s wet and the out-field’s bogged:  For it’s surely raining, anyhow,  In England—now!”

“{{w|Wowser}}: an ineffably pious person who mistakes this world for a penitentiary and himself for a warder.”

“It is on record (in a booklet written by Guy Innes) that when Dennis decided to migrate from South Australia he telegraphed his father, "Send ten pounds. Going {{w|Broken Hill}}", to which appeal the old man promptly replied, "Sending nothing. Go to hell!"”

“Of all the gems in this wide world  (No matter what their hue be),The one I find most beautiful  Is certainly the emerald.”

“Women is strange. You take my tip; I’m wise.  I know enough to know I'll never knowThe ’uman female mind ...”

“It’s bad enough to be a bloke without one reel close friend;But when your dog gives you the bird it’s pretty near the end.”

“Get a —— move on,  Have some —— sense.Learn the —— art of  Self de- —— -fence!”