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D. H. Lawrence
60 quotes
“I hold that the parentheses are by far the most important parts of a non-business letter.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) first seen 1908 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Blanche Jennings (15 April 1908), Letters of D.H. Lawrence (1979), edited by James T. Boulton
“If I had my way, I would build a lethal chamber as big as the Crystal Palace, with a military band playing softly, and a Cinematograph working brightly; then I’d go out in the back streets and main streets and bring them in, all the sick, the halt, and the maimed; I would lead them gently, and they would smile me a weary thanks; and the band would softly bubble out the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) first seen 1880 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Blanche Jennings (9 October 1908), Letters of D.H. Lawrence (1979), James T. Boulton, ed., as quoted in The Intellectuals and the Masses: Pride and Prejudice Among the Literary Intelligentsia, 1880-1939 (1992)…
“My God, these folks don't know how to love — that's why they love so easily.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) first seen 1909 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Blanche Jennings (8 May 1909), The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, ed. James T. Boulton, Vol. 1 (1979), pp. 127
“Tragedy ought really to be a great kick at misery.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) first seen 1912 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to A W McLeod (6 October 1912)
“Curse the blasted, jelly-boned swines, the slimy, the belly-wriggling invertebrates, the miserable sodding rotters, the flaming sods, the sniveling, dribbling, dithering palsied pulse-less lot that make up England today. They've got white of egg in their veins, and their spunk is that watery its a marvel they can breed. They can nothing but frog-spawn — the gibberers! God, how I hate them! God curse them, funkers. God blast them, wish-wash. Exterminate them, slime. I could curse for hours and hours — God help me.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) first seen 1912 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Edward Garnett, expressing anger that his manuscript for Sons and Lovers was rejected by Heinemann (3 July 1912)
“We have to hate our immediate predecessors to get free from their authority.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) first seen 1913 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Edward Garnett (1 February 1913)
“He talked to her endlessly about his love of horizontals: how they, the great levels of sky and land in Lincolnshire, meant to him the eternality of the will, just as the bowed Norman arches of the church, repeating themselves, meant the dogged leaping forward of the persistent human soul, on and on, nobody knows where; in contradiction to the perpendicular lines and to the Gothic arch, which, he said, leapt up at heaven and touched the ecstasy and lost itself in the divine.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) first seen 1913 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Sons and Lovers (1913)
“It's the man who dares to take, who is independent, not he who gives.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) first seen 1913 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to John Middleton Murry, 27 November 1913
“Mrs Morel always said the after-life would hold nothing in store for her husband: he rose from the lower world into purgatory, when he came home from pit, and passed into heaven in the Palmerston Arms.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) first seen 1913 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Sons and Lovers - Edited out of the 1913 edition, restored in 1992
“Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me!”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) first seen 1917 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Song of a Man who has Come Through (1917)
“The nature of the infant is not just a new permutation-and-combination of elements contained in the natures of the parents. There is in the nature of the infant that which is utterly unknown in the natures of the parents.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) first seen 1921 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious (1921)
“The dead don't die. They look on and help.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) first seen 1923 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to John Middleton Murry (2 February 1923)
“California is a queer place — in a way, it has turned its back on the world, and looks into the void Pacific. It is absolutely selfish, very empty, but not false, and at least, not full of false effort.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) first seen 1923 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter (September 24, 1923); published in The Letters of D.H. Lawrence, James T. Boulton, E. Mansfield, and W. Roberts (1987), vol. 4.
“Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) first seen 1923 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Studies in Classic American Literature (1923)
“It was in 1915 the old world ended.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) first seen 1923 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Kangaroo (1923) "The Nightmare
“Men! The only animal in the world to fear!”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) first seen 1923 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Mountain Lion (1923)
“The Rhine is still the Rhine, the great divider... Immediately you are over the Rhine, the spirit of place has changed... It is as if the life had retreated eastwards. As if the Germanic life were slowly ebbing away from contact with western Europe, ebbing to the deserts of the east.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) first seen 1924 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'A Letter from Germany', written 19 February 1924, printed in The New Statesman (13 October 1934), quoted in D. H. Lawrence, Selected Essays (1950), pp. 175-176
“I want to go south, where there is no autumn, where the cold doesn't crouch over one like a snow leopard waiting to pounce. The heart of the North is dead, and the fingers of cold are corpse fingers.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) first seen 1924 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to John Middleton Murry (3 October 1924)
“For Society or Democracy or any political State or Community exists not for the sake of the individual nor should ever exist for the sake of the individual, but simply to establish the Average, in order to make living together possible: that is, to make proper facilities for every man's clothing, feeding, housing himself, working, sleeping, mating, playing, according to his necessity as a common unit, an average. Everything beyond that common necessity depends on himself alone.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) first seen 1925 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine" (1925); also quoted in Hoare, Peter, and Preston, Peter, D. H. Lawrence in the Modern World, London, MacMillian Press, 1989, p.181.
“The more scholastically educated a man is generally, the more he is an emotional boor.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) first seen 1927 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: John Galsworthy (1927)
“Men fight for liberty, and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grandchildren are once more slaves.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) first seen 1929 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Poem, "Liberty's old story" in Pansies (Third typing, ribbon copy - 231 poems, c. 11-28 February 1929)
“Every man has a mob self and an individual self, in varying proportions.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) first seen 1929 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Pornography and Obscenity (1929)
“Pornography is the attempt to insult sex, to do dirt on it.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) first seen 1929 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Pornography and Obscenity (1929)
“I can't stand Willy wet-leg, can't stand him at any price. He's resigned, and when you hit him he lets you hit him twice.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) first seen 1929 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Willy Wet Leg (1929)
“Censors are dead men set up to judge between life and death. For no live, sunny man would be a censor, he'd just laugh.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) first seen 1929 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Censors (1929)
“I never saw a wild thing Sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) first seen 1929 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Self-Pity (1929)
“The tiny fish enjoy themselves in the sea. Quick little splinters of life, their little lives are fun to them in the sea.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) first seen 1929 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Little Fish (1929)
“To the Puritan all things are impure, as somebody says.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) said by 1930 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Sketches of Etruscan Places (1932)
“God is only a great imaginative experience.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) said by 1930 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers of D. H. Lawrence, pt. 4, ed. by E. McDonald, (1936)
“Those that go searching for love only make manifest their own lovelessness, and the loveless never find love, only the loving find love, and they never have to seek for it.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) said by 1930 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Search for Love" in The Works of D. H. Lawrence, Wordsworth Editions, (1994), p. 552
“I suppose that's what we do in death⎯⎯⎯sleep in wonder.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) said by 1930 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To be rid of our individuality, which is our will, which is our effort⎯⎯⎯to live effortless, a kind of curious sleep⎯⎯⎯that is very beautiful, I think; that is our after-life⎯⎯⎯our immortality.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) said by 1930 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Each forgot everything save the hatred of the other.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) said by 1930 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don't think I love you as a man ought to love his wife”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) said by 1930 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But better die than live mechanically a life that is a repetition of repetitions.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) said by 1930 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mystic equality lies in abstraction, not in having or in doing, which are processes. In function and process, one man, one part, must of necessity be subordinate to another. It is a condition of being.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) said by 1930 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) said by 1930 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The world is supposed to be full of possibilities, but they narrow down to pretty few in most personal experience. There's lots of good fish in the sea ... maybe ... but the vast masses seem to be mackerel or herring, and if you're not mackerel or herring yourself you are likely to find very few good fish in the sea.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) said by 1930 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And dimly she realized one of the great laws of the human soul: that when the emotional soul receives a wounding shock, which does not kill the body, the soul seems to recover as the body recovers. But this is only appearance. It is really only the mechanism of the reassumed habit. Slowly, slowly the wound to the soul begins to make itself felt, like a bruise, which only slowly deepens its terrible ache, till it fills all the psyche. And when we think we have recovered and forgotten, it is then that the terrible after-effects have to be encountered at their worst.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) said by 1930 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Folks should do their own fuckin', then they wouldn't want to listen to a lot of clatfart about another man's.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) said by 1930 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I believe in being warm-hearted. I believe especially in being warm-hearted in love, in fucking with a warm heart. I believe if men could fuck with warm hearts, and the women take it warm-heartedly, everything would come all right. It's all the cold-hearted fucking that is death and idiocy.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) said by 1930 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Italians are not passionate: passion has deep reserves. They are easily moved, and often affectionate, but they rarely have any abiding passion of any sort.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) said by 1930 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Money poisons you when you've got it, and starves you when you haven't.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) said by 1930 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Men and women aren't really dogs: they only look like it and behave like it. Somewhere inside there is a great chagrin and a gnawing discontent.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) said by 1930 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Of course Celia shits! Who doesn't? And how much worse if she didn't.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) said by 1930 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Augustine said that God created the universe new every day: and to the living, emotional soul, this is true. Every dawn dawns upon an entirely new universe, every Easter lights up an entirely new glory of a new world opening in utterly new flower. And the soul of man and the soul of woman is new in the same way, with the infinite delight of life and the ever-newness of life. So a man and a woman are new to one another throughout a life-time, in the rhythm of marriage that matches the rhythm of the year.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) said by 1930 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Marriage is the clue to human life, but there is no marriage apart from the wheeling sun and the nodding earth, from the straying of the planets and the magnificance of the fixed stars. Is not a man different, utterly different, at dawn from what he is at sunset? And a woman too? And does not the changing harmony and discord of their variation make the secret music of life?”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) said by 1930 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When I read Shakespeare I am struck with wonder that such trivial people should muse and thunder in such lovely language.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) said by 1930 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am not a mechanism, an assembly of various sections. And it is not because the mechanism is working wrongly, that I am ill. I am ill because of wounds to the soul, to the deep emotional self and the wounds to the soul take a long, long time, only time can help and patience, and a certain difficult repentance long, difficult repentance, realization of life’s mistake, and the freeing oneself from the endless repetition of the mistake which mankind at large has chosen to sanctify.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) said by 1930 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The gods are nameless and imageless yet looking in a great full lime-tree of summer I suddenly saw deep into the eyes of gods: it is enough.”
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) said by 1930 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source