We find it so much easier, you will observe, to forgive our own shortc — Joseph Furphy

"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 ..."

"Ten thousand women revered and idolized John Wesley; but there was one woman to whom he was small spuds, and few in a hill; one woman who used to put out her tongue at him when he was preaching, and who, in the seclusion of domestic life, cursed and cuffed him, and set him utterly at naught. That was the dear lady Disdain who had studied the demi-gods close-cropped, wigless cranium; who had watched him shaving, and had marked him snore o nights; who was familiar with all his jokes, and who knew exactly how much truth there was in his yarns; who had heard the demi-gods voice saying: "D——n the boots! and the (adj.) snob that made them!"—or words to that effect."

"The gods will give us some faults to make us men; therefore no man is up to the husband-ideal of a loving woman. The bachelor may reach this standard-for why shouldnt he be magnanimous, and mettlesome, and debonair; prepared to do all that may become a man, and sometimes even things that dont? And if he should fall a trifle short of the real Mackay-a contingency that you may safely count upon-he is in no way compelled to flaunt his own worthlessness before the feminine eye."

"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."

"... 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 ..."

"I compare tracking to reading a letter written in a good business hand. You mustnt look at whats under your eye; you must see a lot at once, and keep a general grasp of whats on ahead, besides spotting each track you pass."