“Really! But weren't you fearfully tempted?' 'In the abstract but not in the concrete,' said Ursula. 'When it comes to the point, one isn't even tempted—oh, if I were tempted, I'd marry like a shot. I'm only tempted NOT to.' The faces of both sisters suddenly lit up with amusement.”

“Have I interrupted a conversation?' she asked. 'No, only a complete silence,' said Birkin. 'Oh,' said Ursula, vaguely, absent.”

“Obscenity only comes in when the mind despises and fears the body, and the body hates and resists the mind.”

“If you could only tell them that living and spending isn't the same thing! But it's no good. If only they were educated to live instead of earn and spend, they could manage very happily...”

“I WANT her though, to take the same from me.She touches me as if I were herself, her own.She has not realized yet, that fearful thing, thatI am the other,she thinks we are all of one piece.It is painfully untrue.I want her to touch me at last, ah, on the root andquick of my darknessand perish on me, as I have perished on her.Then, we shall be two and distinct, we shall haveeach our separate being.And that will be pure existence, real liberty.Till then, we are confused, a mixture, unresolved,unextricated one from the other.It is in pure, unutterable resolvedness, distinctionof being, that one is free,not in mixing, merging, not in similarity.When she has put her hand on my secret, darkestsources, the darkest outgoings,when it has struck home to her, like a death, "this is _him!_"she has no part in it, no part whatever,it is the terrible _other_,when she knows the fearful _other flesh_, ah, dark-ness unfathomable and fearful, contiguous and concrete,when she is slain against me, and lies in a heaplike one outside the house,when she passes away as I have passed awaybeing pressed up against the _other_,then I shall be glad, I shall not be confused with her,I shall be cleared, distinct, single as if burnished in silver,having no adherence, no adhesion anywhere,one clear, burnished, isolated being, unique,and she also, pure, isolated, complete,two of us, unutterably distinguished, and in unutterable conjunction.Then we shall be free, freer than angels, ah, perfect.VIIIAFTER that, there will only remain that all mendetach themselves and become unique,that we are all detached, moving in freedom morethan the angels,conditioned only by our own pure single being,having no laws but the laws of our own being.Every human being will then be like a flower, untrammelled.Every movement will be direct.Only to be will be such delight, we cover our faceswhen we think of itlest our faces betray us to some untimely fiend.Every man himself, and therefore, a surpassingsingleness of mankind.The blazing tiger will spring upon the deer, un-dimmed,the hen will nestle over her chickens,we shall love, we shall hate,but it will be like music, sheer utterance,issuing straight out of the unknown,the lightning and the rainbow appearing in usunbidden, unchecked,like ambassadors.We shall not look before and after.We shall _be_, _now_.We shall know in full.We, the mystic NOW.(From the poem the Manifesto)”

“You're always begging things to love you," he said, "as if you were a beggar for love. Even the flowers, you have to fawn on them--”

“because when i feel the human world is doomed, has doomed itself by its own mingy beastliness, then i feel the colonies aren't far enough. the moon wouldn't be far enough, because even there you could look back and see the earth, dirty, beastly, unsavory among all the stars: made foul by men. Then i feel i've swallowed gall, and its eating my inside out, and nowhere's far enough to get away. but when i get a turn, i forget it all again. though it's a shame, what's been done to people these last hundred years: men turned into nothing but labor-insects, and all their manhood taken away, and all their real life. i'd wipe the machines off the face of the earth again, and end the industrial epoch absolutely, like a black mistake. but since i can't, an' nobody can, i'd better hold my peace, an' try an' life my own life: if i've got one to live, which i rather doubt.”