Michael Leunig Quotes

• Each day is a lifetime. In the morning we are born. The day lies before us: vast and bright and new.

  Michael Leunig

  Morning, Lying, Each Day

  55 Copy quote

• Love one another and you will be happy. It's as simple and as difficult as that

  Michael Leunig

  Love, Inspirational, Happiness

  Michael Leunig (2006). “When I Talk to You: A Cartoonist Talks to God”, p.131, Andrews McMeel Publishing

  57 Copy quote

• When the heart is cut or cracked or broken Do not clutch it Let the wound lie open Let the wind from the good old sea blow in to bathe the wound with salt and let it sting. Let a stray dog lick it Let a bird fly in the hole and sing a simple song like a tiny bell and let it ring.

  Michael Leunig

  Dog, Song, Lying

  46 Copy quote

• Sometimes I wonder if the semi-conscious agenda of the media is to get between people and their souls. It is the the soul with its myriad tiny nerve endings that notices the neglected pathos, poignancy and practicality that lies at the heart of life. It's as if the media are somehow irritated and envious that anonymous people should have the quiet brilliance of their rich and sustainable inner lives.

  Michael Leunig

  Lying, Heart, Media

  50 Copy quote

• In order to be truthful
  We must do more than speak the truth.
  We must also hear truth.
  We must also receive truth.
  We must also act upon truth.
  We must also search for truth.
  The difficult truth
  Within us and around us.
  We must devote ourselves to truth.
  Otherwise we are dishonest
  And our lives are mistaken.
  God grant us the strength and the courage
  To be truthful.
  Amen

  Michael Leunig

  Honesty, Order, Truthful

  Michael Leunig (2006). “When I Talk to You: A Cartoonist Talks to God”, p.55, Andrews McMeel Publishing

  41 Copy quote

• God help us to live slowly:
  To move simply:
  To look softly:
  To allow emptiness:
  To let the heart create for us.
  Amen.

  Michael Leunig

  Moving, Heart, Looks

  Michael Leunig (2006). “When I Talk to You: A Cartoonist Talks to God”, p.59, Andrews McMeel Publishing

  27 Copy quote

• There are only two feelings, Love and fear:
  There are only two languages, Love and fear:
  There are only two activities, Love and fear:
  There are only two motives, two procedures,
  two frameworks, two results, Love and fear,
  Love and fear.

  Michael Leunig

  Two, Feelings, Language

  Michael Leunig (2006). “When I Talk to You: A Cartoonist Talks to God”, p.45, Andrews McMeel Publishing

  21 Copy quote

• God bless this tiny little boat, And me who travels in it. It stays afloat for years and years, And sinks within a minute. And so the soul in which we sail, Unknown by years of thinking, Is deeply felt and understood, The minute that it’s sinking.

  Michael Leunig

  Thinking, Years, Soul

  Michael Leunig (2006). “When I Talk to You: A Cartoonist Talks to God”, p.122, Andrews McMeel Publishing

  31 Copy quote

• Wars don't happen on battlefields; they go on happening in people's hearts for generations and generations, and the ecological damage is unfathomably complex and dire.

  Michael Leunig

  War, Heart, People

  24 Copy quote

• In order to be truthful we must do more than speak the truth. We must also hear truth, receive truth, search for truth.

  Michael Leunig

  Order, Truthful, Speak

  Michael Leunig (2006). “When I Talk to You: A Cartoonist Talks to God”, p.55, Andrews McMeel Publishing

  16 Copy quote

• If European symbols and traditions have grown tired, perfunctory and oppressively banal in Australia, or been drained of spirit and meaning by the dreary dictates of materialism and secularity, then the raw spirit truth of our native land is alive and radiant by comparison. For joy and meaning we might well turn to our natural country and witness miracles of vitality and new life, of inspiration and profound beauty; all in some humble, quiet and improbable place.

  Michael Leunig

  Wisdom, Country, Nature

  20 Copy quote

• At the very simplest, I think as Van Gogh said and St Francis would have said, we must find nature. Just to be in the presence of nature your feelings and 'little seedlings' start to awake. So if we disassociate ourselves from God we cut nature out, too. More and more we turn nature into a commodity, into eco-tourism. But we must integrate it into the way people live every day.

  Michael Leunig

  Nature, Cutting, Thinking

  15 Copy quote

• The most joyous painting is not done for the art world, it is done for the inner world.

  Michael Leunig

  Art, Done, World

  Michael Leunig (2013). “The Holy Fool: Artworks”, p.9, Allen & Unwin

  8 Copy quote

• For me, spirit is the impulse towards life, the Eros in a person leaping forward, whereas soul refers to something possibly long.. suffering, where meanings are made, where there is a sense of this gathering of perceptions, that our death is not the most important thing, nor our life.

  Michael Leunig

  Art, Long, Soul

  15 Copy quote

• Love a single an additional and you will be satisfied. It really is as easy and as challenging as that.

  Michael Leunig

  Challenges, Easy, Satisfied

  19 Copy quote

• Ah, whimsical. It's terrible the way words get attached to you like barnacles. As is what I do is acting on a 'whim'. If only these were gifts from God when I get an idea, but everything I have done that I really love has had a lot of hard work behind it.

  Michael Leunig

  Art, Hard Work, Ideas

  14 Copy quote

• Easter is reflecting upon suffering for one thing, but it also reflects upon Jesus and his non-compliance in the face of great authority where he holds to his truth - so there's two stories there.

  Michael Leunig

  Jesus, Easter, Reflecting Upon

  "Michael Leunig Finds Modern Meaning in the Easter Story". Interview with Annette Marner, www.abc.net.au. March 28, 2013.

  12 Copy quote

• A world view is probably an expression of self.

  Michael Leunig

  Self, Views, Expression

  4 Copy quote

• There is some suffering that awaits us all.

  Michael Leunig

  Suffering

  5 Copy quote

• There was all this loneliness in my cartoons and people would say, "Gee, these characters are so lonely, disconnected, depressed." And I'd say, 'Yeah well, that's not me. I'm just interested in that because I think it makes a funny drawing.' But later I understood it was me in many respects; my hand was doing it ahead of the head's understanding.

  Michael Leunig

  Wisdom, Lonely, Loneliness

  10 Copy quote

• The creative act is also in a small way a suffering act - we start out with our ego, this hope of making this thing whatever it be, but so often it eludes us and it collapses and we kind of regress into this mental suffering, we can't find what we're looking for.

  Michael Leunig

  Elude Us, Creative, Ego

  9 Copy quote

• Is a brazen and innocent confrontation with paternal authority an unbearably terrifying prospect to some? Are the consequences of a fathers anger and displeasure so catastrophic in the primal imagination that every semblance of it in the world both literally and metaphorically must be denounced in the strongest possible terms? It would seem so.

  Michael Leunig

  Father, Imagination, World

  12 Copy quote

• I didn't mind my own company as a child; I was happy playing alone in the sandpit.

  Michael Leunig

  Art, Children, Mind

  7 Copy quote

• Don't give in to hate - it puts you off balance

  Michael Leunig

  Hate, Giving, Balance

  4 Copy quote

• The cartoonist’s task is not so much to be balanced as to give balance, particularly in situations of disproportionate power relationships such as we see in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

  Michael Leunig

  Giving, Balance, Tasks

  7 Copy quote

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