D. H. Lawrence Quotes
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It seems to me a purely lyric poet gives himself, right down to his sex, to his mood, utterly and abandonedly, whirls himself roundtill he spontaneously combusts into verse. He has nothing that goes on, no passion, only a few intense moods, separate like odd stars, and when each has burned away, he must die.
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And this is the final meaning of work: the extension of human consciousness. The lesser meaning of work is the achieving of self-preservation.
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You'll never succeed in idealizing hard work. Before you can dig mother earth you've got to take off your ideal jacket. The harder a man works, at brute labor, the thinner becomes his idealism, the darker his mind.
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I never knew how soothing trees are-many trees and patches of open sunlight, and tree presences; it is almost like having another being.
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When each thing is unique in itself, there can be no comparison made.... There is only this strange recognition of present otherness.
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Love is never a fulfillment. Life is never a thing of continuous bliss. There is no paradise. Fight and laugh and feel bitter and feel bliss: and fight again. Fight, fight. That is life.
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The reaction to any word may be, in an individual, either a mob-reaction or an individual reaction. It is up to the individual to ask himself: Is my reaction individual, or am I merely reacting from my mob-self? When it comes to the so-called obscene words, I should say that hardly one person in a million escapes mob-reaction.
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Sleep is still most perfect, in spite of hygienists, when it is shared with a beloved. The warmth, the security and peace of soul, the utter comfort from the touch of the other, knits the sleep, so that it takes the body and soul completely in its healing.
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It is only when men lose their contact with this eternal life-flame, and become merely personal, things in themselves, instead ofthings kindled in the flame, that the fight between man and woman begins.
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The lion shall never lie down with the lamb. The lion eternally shall devour the lamb, the lamb eternally shall be devoured. Man knows the great consummation in the flesh, the sensual ecstasy, and that is eternal. Also the spiritual ecstasy of unanimity, that is eternal. But the two are separate and never to be confused.
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One should stick by one's soul, and by nothing else. In one's soul, one knows the truth from the untruth, and life from death. And if one betrays one's own soul-knowledge one is the worst of traitors.
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If a novel reveals true and vivid relationships, it is a moral work, no matter what the relationships consist in. If the novelisthonours the relationship in itself, it will be a great novel.
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Gods should be iridescent, like the rainbow in the storm. Man creates a God in his own image, and the gods grow old along with the men that made them... But the god-stuff roars eternally, like the sea, with too vast a sound to be heard.
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He always ran away from the battle with himself. Even in his own heart's privacy, he excused himself, saying, "If she hadn't said so-and-so, it would never have happened.
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America is neither free nor brave, but a land of tight, iron-clanking little wills, everybody trying to put it over everybody else, and a land of men absolutely devoid of the real courage of trust, trust in life's sacred spontaneity. They can't trust life until they can control it.
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The history of our era is the nauseating and repulsive history of the crucifixion of the procreative body for the glorification ofthe spirit.
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Sanity means the wholeness of the consciousness. And our society is only part conscious, like an idiot.
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We have lost the art of living, and in the most important science of all, the science of daily life, the science of behavior, we are complete ignoramuses. We have psychology instead.
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Eat and carouse with Bacchus, or munch dry bread with Jesus, but don't sit down without one of the gods.
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Beauty is an experience, nothing else. It is not a fixed pattern or an arrangement of features. It is something felt, a glow or a communicated sense of fineness.
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We must know, if only in order to learn not to know. The supreme lesson of human consciousness is to learn how not to know. That is, how not to interfere.
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The living self has one purpose only: to come into its own fullness of being, as a tree comes into full blossom, or a bird into spring beauty, or a tiger into lustre.
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How the horse dominated the mind of the early races especially of the Mediterranean! You were a lord if you had a horse. Far back, far back in our dark soul the horse prances...The horse, the horse! The symbol of surging potency and power of movement, of action in man!
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Most men have a deadness in them that frightens me so because of my own deadness. Why can't men get their life straight, like St.Mawr, and then think? Why can't they think quick, mother: quick as a woman: only farther than we do?