D.H. Lawrence

“In the depths of him, he too didn't want to go. But he was a born American, and if anything was on show, he had to see it. That was Life.”

“But that is how men are! Ungrateful and never satisfied. When you don't have them they hate you because you won't; and when you do have them they hate you again, for some other reason. Or for no reason at all, except that they are discontented children, and can't be satisfied whatever they get, let a woman do what she may.”

“One watches them on the seashore, all the people, and there is something pathetic, almost wistful in them, as if they wished their lives did not add up to this scaly nullity of possession, but as if they could not escape. It is a dragon that has devoured us all: these obscene, scaly houses, this insatiable struggle and desire to possess, to possess always and in spite of everything, this need to be an owner, lest one be owned. It is too hideous and nauseating. Owners and owned, they are like the two sides of a ghastly disease. One feels a sort of madness come over one, as if the world had become hell. But it is only superimposed: it is only a temporary disease. It can be cleaned away.”

“This is the very worst wickedness, that we refuse to acknowledge the passionate evil that is in us. ”

“A woman unsatisfied must have luxuries. But a woman who loves a man would sleep on a board”

“As we all know, too much of any divine thing is destruction”

“Life is ours to be spent, not tobe saved.”

“Always this same morbid interest in other people and their doings, their privacies, their dirty linen, always this air of alertness for personal happenings, personalities, personalities, personalities. Always this subtle criticism and appraisal of other people, this analysis of other people’s motives. If anatomy presupposes a corpse, then psychology presupposes a world of corpses. Personalities, which means personal criticism and analysis, presuppose a whole world laboratory of human psyches waiting to be vivisected. If you cut a thing up, of course it will smell. Hence, nothing raises such an infernal stink, at last, as human psychology.”

“If a woman hasn't got a tiny streak of harlot in her, she's a dry stick as a rule.”

“It is a fine thing to establish one's own religion in one's heart, not to be dependent on tradition and second-hand ideals. Life will seem to you, later, not a lesser, but a greater thing.”

“Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made personal, merely personal feeling. This is what is the matter with us: we are bleeding at the roots because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars. Love has become a grinning mockery because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the Tree of Life and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table.”

“The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.”

“Never trust the teller, trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.”

“Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot.”

“One must learn to love, and go through a good deal of suffering to get to it, and the journey is always towards the other soul.”

“Things men have made with wakened hands, and put soft life intoare awake through years with transferred touch, and go on glowingfor long years.And for this reason, some old things are lovelywarm still with the life of forgotten men who made them.”

“He's got _go_, anyhow.' Certainly, he's got go,' said Gudrun. 'In fact I've never seen a man that showed signs of so much. The unfortunate thing is, where does his _go_ go to, what becomes of it?”

“When I hear modern people complain of being lonely then I know what has happened. They have lost the cosmos.”

“It's no good trying to get rid of your own aloneness. You've got to stick to it all your life. Only at times, at times, the gap will be filled in. At times! But you have to wait for the times. Accept your own aloneness and stick to it, all your life. And then accept the times when the gap is filled in, when they come. But they've got to come. You can't force them.”

“All that we know is nothing, we are merely crammed wastepaper baskets,unless we are in touch with that which laughs at all our knowing.”

“The human being is a most curious creature. He thinks he has got onesoul, and he has got dozens.”

“When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego,and when we escape like squirrels turning in thecages of our personalityand get into the forests again,we shall shiver with cold and frightbut things will happen to usso that we don't know ourselves.Cool, unlying life will rush in,and passion will make our bodies taut with power,we shall stamp our feet with new powerand old things will fall down,we shall laugh, and institutions will curl up likeburnt paper.”

“I should feel the air move against me, and feel the things I touched, instead of having only to look at them. I'm sure life is all wrong because it has become much too visual - we can neither hear nor feel nor understand, we can only see. I'm sure that is entirely wrong.”

“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.”

“I am part of the sun as my eye is of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea.”

“ravished by dead words become obscene, and dead ideas become obsessions.”

“This is what I believe: That I am I. That my soul is a dark forest. That my known self will never be more than a little clearing in the forest. That gods, strange gods, come forth from the forest into the clearing of my known self, and then go back. That I must have the courage to let them come and go. That I will never let mankind put anything over me, but that I will try always to recognize and submit to the gods in me and the gods in other men and women. There is my creed.”

“A dozen or more boats on the lake swung their rosy and moon–like lanterns low on the water, that reflected as from a fire. In the distance, the steamer twanged and thrummed and washed with her faintly–splashing paddles, trailing her strings of coloured lights, and occasionally lighting up the whole scene luridly with an effusion of fireworks, Roman candles and sheafs of stars and other simple effects, illuminating the surface of the water, and showing the boats creeping round, low down. Then the lovely darkness fell again, the lanterns and the little threaded lights glimmered softly, there was a muffled knocking of oars and a waving of music.Gudrun paddled almost imperceptibly. Gerald could see, not far ahead, the rich blue and the rose globes of Ursula’s lanterns swaying softly cheek to cheek as Birkin rowed, and iridescent, evanescent gleams chasing in the wake. He was aware, too, of his own delicately coloured lights casting their softness behind him.”