# Miles Franklin - Quotes: 15 - Author page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/miles-franklin ## Books - [My Brilliant Career](https://www.leafyquotes.com/miles-franklin/my-brilliant-career.md) — 15 quotes ## Recently added quotes > Ah, health and wealth, happiness and youth, joy and light, life and love! What a warm-hearted place is the world, how full of pleasure, good, and beauty, when fortune smiles! When fortune smiles! [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/miles-franklin/my-brilliant-career/ah-health-and.md) > I am proud that I am an Australian, a daughter of the Southern Cross, a child of the mighty bush. I am thankful I am a peasant, a part of the bone and muscle of my nation, and earn my bread by the sweat of my brow, as man was meant to do. I rejoice I was not born a parasite, one of the blood-suckers who loll on velvet and satin, crushed from the proceeds of human sweat and blood and souls. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/miles-franklin/my-brilliant-career/i-am-proud.md) > After all, what is there in vain ambition? King or slave, we all must die, and when death knocks at our door, will it matter whether our life has been great or small, fast or slow, so long as it has been true--true with the truth that will bring rest to the soul? [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/miles-franklin/my-brilliant-career/after-all-what.md) > It appears that we all labour under delusions. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/miles-franklin/my-brilliant-career/it-appears-that.md) > Ah, the bitter, hopeless heart-hunger of godlessness none but an atheist can understand! Nothing to live for in life--no hope beyond the grave. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/miles-franklin/my-brilliant-career/ah-the-bitter.md) > If the souls of lives were voiced in music, there are some that none but a great organ could express, others the clash of a full orchestra, a few to which nought but the refined and exquisite sadness of a violin could do justice. Many might be likened unto common pianos, jangling and out of tune, and some to the feeble piping of a penny whistle, and mine could be told with a couple of nails in a rusty tin-pot. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/miles-franklin/my-brilliant-career/if-the-souls.md) > I love you, I love you. Bravely you jog along with the rope of class distinction drawing closer, closer, tighter, tighter around you: a few more generations and you will be as enslaved as were ever the moujiks of Russia. I see it and know it, but I cannot help you. My ineffective life will be trod out in the same round of toil- I am only one of yourselves, I am only an unnecessary, little, bush commoner, I am only a- woman! [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/miles-franklin/my-brilliant-career/i-love-you.md) > Christmas, only distinguished from the fifty-two slow Sundays of the year by plum-pudding, roast turkey, and a few bottles of home-made beer... [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/miles-franklin/my-brilliant-career/christmas-only-distinguished.md) > But in all the wide world there was not a soul to hold out a hand to me, and I said bitterly, "There is no good in the world." In softer moods I said, "Ah, the tangle of it! Those who have the heart to help have not the power, and those who have the power have not the heart." [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/miles-franklin/my-brilliant-career/but-in-all.md) > To weary hearts throbbing slowly in hopeless breasts the sweetest thing is rest. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/miles-franklin/my-brilliant-career/to-weary-hearts.md) > Provided a woman is beautiful allowance will be made for all her shortcomings. She can be unchaste, vapid, untruthful, flippant, heartless, and even clever; so long as she is fair to see men will stand by her, and as men, in this world, are "the dog on top", they are the power to truckle to. A plain woman will have nothing forgiven her. Her fate is such that the parents of uncomely female infants should be compelled to put them to death at their birth. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/miles-franklin/my-brilliant-career/provided-a-woman.md) > I make no apologies for being egotistical. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/miles-franklin/my-brilliant-career/i-make-no-apologies.md)