English author (1885-1930)
Death is ... a travelling asunder into elemental chaos. And from the elemental chaos all is cast forth again into creation. Therefore death also is but a cul-de-sac, a melting-pot.
D. H. LAWRENCE
"Love"
Perhaps only people who are capable of real togetherness have that look of being alone in the universe. The others have a certain stickiness, they stick to the mass.
D. H. LAWRENCE
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Whatever God there is is slowly eliminating the guts and alimentary system from the human being, to evolve a higher, more spiritual being.
D. H. LAWRENCE
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Why is a door-knob deader than anything else?
D. H. LAWRENCE
Sons and Lovers
That's just what a woman is. She thinks she knows what's good for a man, and she's going to see he gets it; and no matter if he's starving, he may sit and whistle for what he needs, while she's got him, and is giving him what's good for him.
D. H. LAWRENCE
Sons and Lovers
Sacred love is selfless, seeking not its own. The lover serves his beloved and seeks perfect communion of oneness with her.
D. H. LAWRENCE
"Love"
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
letter, September 24, 1923
My wife has a beastly habit of comparing poetry -- all literature in fact -- to the droppings of the goats among the rocks -- mere excreta that fertilises the ground it falls on.
D. H. LAWRENCE
letter to Edward Marsh, November 18, 1913
When love enters, the whole spiritual constitution of a man changes, is filled with the Holy Ghost, and almost his form is altered.
D. H. LAWRENCE
Sons and Lovers
I love Italian opera -- it's so reckless. Damn Wagner, and his bellowings at Fate and death. Damn Debussy, and his averted face. I like the Italians who run all on impulse, and don't care about their immortal souls, and don't worry about the ultimate.
D. H. LAWRENCE
letter, Apr. 1, 1911
To the Puritan all things are impure.
D. H. LAWRENCE
Sketches of Etruscan Places
His wife was casting him off, half regretfully, but relentlessly; casting him off and turning now for love and life to the children. Henceforward he was more or less a husk. And he himself acquiesced, as so many men do, yielding their place to their children.
D. H. LAWRENCE
Sons and Lovers
Don't talk to me any more about poetry for months -- unless it is other men's work. I really love verse, even rubbish. But I'm fearfully busy at a novel, and brush all the gossamer of verse off my face.
D. H. LAWRENCE
letter to Edward Marsh, November 18, 1913
For the robot classes and masses are only kept sane by the kindness of living women and men.
D. H. LAWRENCE
"Real Democracy", The Complete Poems
Beware of absolutes. There are many gods.
D. H. LAWRENCE
Studies in Classic American Literature
Happiness was a term of hypocrisy used to bluff other people.
D. H. LAWRENCE
Lady Chatterley's Lover
It seems to me absolutely true, that our world, which appears to us the surface of all things, is really the bottom of a deep ocean: all our trees are submarine growths, and we are weird, scaly-clad submarine fauna, feeding ourselves on offal like shrimps. Only occasionally the soul rises gasping through the fathomless fathoms under which we live, far up to the surface of the ether, where there is true air.
D. H. LAWRENCE
Lady Chatterley's Lover
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
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Melville had to fight, fight against the existing world, against his own very self. Only he would never quite put the knife in the heart of his paradisal ideal. Somehow, somewhere, somewhen, love should be a fulfillment, and life should be a thing of bliss. That was his fixed ideal. Fata Morgana. That was the pin he tortured himself on, like a pinned-down butterfly.
D. H. LAWRENCE
Studies in Classic American Literature
We have to hate our immediate predecessors to get free from their authority.
D. H. LAWRENCE
letter to Edward Garnett, February 1, 1913