I compare tracking to reading a letter written in a good business hand — Joseph Furphy

"Comedy is tragedy, plucked unripe."

"... each man, be he king or beggar, is a little world of his own. If he be swayed by a female, as kings and beggars frequently are, he is an extremely little world."

"The successful pioneer is the man who never spared others; the forgotten pioneer is the man who never spared 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."

"Now, I have a theory that women do not love their husbands ... I hold that married life is a long-drawn ordeal, which no man short of a Chevalier Bayard has any business to face ..."

"... I noticed both womens eyes fixed on my face, with a disconcerting interest in the casual gossip. It is humiliating when you feel yourself expected to say something good, and a swift reconnaissance of the subject shows you no opening for anything beyond what a nobleman might drivel. Moreover, I was fresh from the pastoral regions, where etiquette demands frank, unsolicited, and copious comment on the merits or demerits of some absent person ..."

"Our virgin continent! how long has she tarried her bridal day!"