Quotation
In his 1908 book, Dad in Politics, Davis satirises political life in the opening sentence:
“ | Smith, the member for our district, died one day, and we forgot all about him the next. Not that a politician is ever remembered much after he dies, but Smith had been a blind, bigoted, old Tory, and was better dead. Politicians are mostly better dead, so far as other people and their country is concerned … | ” |
This quotation is often used to illustrate the cynicism of Australians towards the political class. FitzHenry notes that Davis's satirical depiction of individual members of the Queensland Parliament was so close to reality that he was 'almost called to the Bar'
Read more about this topic: Steele Rudd
Famous quotes containing the word quotation:
“With wonderful art he grinds into paint for his picture all his moods and experiences, so that all his forces may be brought to the encounter. Apparently writing without a particular design or responsibility, setting down his soliloquies from time to time, taking advantage of all his humors, when at length the hour comes to declare himself, he puts down in plain English, without quotation marks, what he, Thomas Carlyle, is ready to defend in the face of the world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“We are as much informed of a writers genius by what he selects as by what he originates. We read the quotation with his eyes, and find a new and fervent sense; as a passage from one of the poets, well recited, borrows new interest from the rendering. As the journals say, the italics are ours.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“The habit some writers indulge in of perpetual quotation is one it behoves lovers of good literature to protest against, for it is an insidious habit which in the end must cloud the stream of thought, or at least check spontaneity. If it be true that le style cest lhomme, what is likely to happen if lhomme is for ever eking out his own personality with that of some other individual?”
—Dame Ethel Smyth (18581944)