R M Williams Quotes
100 R M Williams Quotes
1 2 3
[On his father] He was essentially a quiet man, a man who never wrote letters…
R M Williams
My father had hands like a giant. As a child I had small slender fingers, and it was my ambition to develop hands like my father’s. Artists have lately expressed the wish to paint my hands, so somewhere along the way I must have achieved my wish.
R M Williams
[On Clydesdales] Teams being the main source of Dad’s income he had numbers of the big quiet horses with their heavy feet and their long silken manes.
R M Williams
Haulage of one sort or another was the biggest business of the time.
R M Williams
I have seen lightning light fires in the long grass ahead of me as I have ridden. No wonder the Aborigines tremble when the sky rumbles!
R M Williams
Mother was born about 1880, and died in 1984 at the age of 103.
R M Williams
[On his first school] The school itself was a small stone building, big enough to seat about twenty people. The dozen pupils ranged from beginners like us to those in Grade Five, the top…
R M Williams
[On his school days] We had a song for the alphabet, a song for the months of the year, still another for the arithmetic tables…
R M Williams
There’s no need to look at a machine to find what is twelve times twelve. The answer is indelibly there.
R M Williams
[On his school days] I learned the formula of adding and subtracting, learned about the dictionary, and knew that the information to solve any problem was to be found somewhere. But I was bottom of the class all the way – not because I did not like Miss McNeil, but because I could not handle the required standards. The dear lady would keep me sitting by the hour to establish the way a world like ‘altogether’ was sounded and spelt.
R M Williams
[On World War I] I was six when the war started, ten when the Armistice ended the slaughter. The best of our horses had gone to pull guns, and the pony that I loved so much had been taken to pull a wagon of war. Thus early I learned of man’s inhumanity to man.
R M Williams
Before I was fourteen I planned to leave school forever, and trust to fortune to get an education. At that time it did not occur to me that I would need to study the English language and acquire a knowledge of geography, history and other subjects so necessary to understanding the modern world. That was to come many years later…
R M Williams
I could see no place for myself in the halls of learning; all I wanted to do was get back to the land.
R M Williams
[On his mother helping him get a job as a builder] I felt at once that the job was not for me, and stayed in it less than a week…
R M Williams
There was still resentment in me that my mother had persuaded my father to leave the life with the anvil and the reins to take up what I considered to be a useless retirement.
R M Williams
I quickly learned that a stockman’s home is a piece of canvas three metres by two and a half metres, plus a blanket and two stout straps; nothing fancy, for ‘th’apparel oft proclaims the man’. Indeed the way a man rolls his swag tells the discerning much about him.
R M Williams
The centre of Australia is a land almost without dew, therefore comfortable, and in spite of it’s dry bulldust, clean to those who know how to keep clean in it.
R M Williams
The urge to get out and go it alone must be strong in most people, for the spirit of man answers to the blood of his ancestors.
R M Williams
We contain our past. Unknown it might be, but it persists alive and urging.
R M Williams
We are sculptures in the making, just begun by the great Artist; not yet formed but indicative of what is to come.
R M Williams
My book on leather-plaiting, first prepared more than fifty years ago, has been circulating in increasing numbers and many enthusiasts have come to me personally to have the knots demonstrated when they have found it difficult to learn from diagrams. I feel guilty that very little of the knowledge accumulated through a lifetime is in print, especially some of the more intricate knots which I find hard to illustrate.
R M Williams
[On the Western world wrongly expecting privilege] More than half of the world’s population, struggle for food – but we expect privilege.
R M Williams
When everyone faces the harsh facts of life and comes to understand that privilege is not a right but a reward, we shall return to full employment because there is more than enough work to keep the whole world busy.
R M Williams
Any manual skill gives its practitioner much personal pleasure, particularly when it is one that admits of constant improvement.
R M Williams
In plaiting, one of the most intricate artifacts I know is the watch pouch, made from a single stand of leather, that Dollar Mick taught me in the camp at Ettalowie. Based on a knot of great detail, it is always a prized possession of its owner. Over the years I have made a number of these and given some to my sons as Christmas presents, together with special watches.
R M Williams
A young tall athletic Indian chap we had with us at that time loved the game of chasing wild cattle. He thought it fun to leap from a galloping horse to even a well-grown bull and throw it either by the front leg or by the tail, an exercise requiring great skill and ability. I doubt if many people have ever seen this done. Of course in the days when cattle were handled more intensively many great old stockmen practised this custom on the big holdings. I do not think the matadors of Spain faced wild bulls so utterly dangerous, yet this was done here in lonely places and amongst thick timber. There were no cheering crowds to watch.
R M Williams
Towards the end of those drought years the Department of Primary Industry had discovered that cattle given licks of a mixture of molasses and urea and phosphoric acid maintained health and condition even though the available grazing was extremely poor, and they would ingest materials they would normally ignore, such as wattle and whitewood leaves, and prickly pear.
R M Williams
In times of drought water brings us a major problem despite its essentiality, and this especially so where dams are the chief watering points, because as the waters recede the cattle have to tread over ground that is ever wetter and boggier and more difficult to cross. In their weakened condition cattle go down in this deep mud. Every day it is necessary to ride out and check these boggy dams and try to pull the cattle out.
R M Williams
It was the horse and buggy days... horses were our life.
R M Williams
I just wanted to see the wide world.
R M Williams
We used to grind our own wheat and cook rabbits and kangaroos.
R M Williams
[Sir Sidney] Kidman gave me a start making pack saddles and that started me off.
R M Williams
[On purchasing a gold mine whilst debt in debt and getting lucky – ‘Nobles Nob becoming one of the richest small gold mines in Australia’] We made many, many millions.
R M Williams
I couldn't handle prosperity... I went back to where I belonged.
R M Williams
Don’t make your story too big. I don’t want you big-noting me.
R M Williams
[On being asked to help produce the 1995 Waltzing Matilda Centenary in outback Centenary whilst almost 90 years of age] You’d better come early son because I’ve got a lot of work to do on the property and don’t want to get behind.
R M Williams
Make sure you use Scobie whips…
R M Williams
I’ve got to go and check my stock.
R M Williams
It was only ever an experience in making a dollar. The company was only ever a small part of my life. I've done a lot of things that have given me greater pleasure.
R M Williams
The mastery of those Aboriginals over their environment has been the inspiration of my life. I would like to be the master of my environment as they are of theirs. I think I have gone a long way towards that, but not nearly far enough. I have a tremendous respect for them.
R M Williams
1 2 3
Return from R M Williams Quotes to
Quoteswise.com