Quotes from D. H. Lawrence

When I went to the scientific doctor I realised what a lust there was in him to wreak his so-called science on me and reduce me to the level of a thing. So I said: Good-morning! and left him.

Where the electron behaves and misbehaves as it will, where the forces tie themselves up into knots of atoms and come united.

For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive.

Towns oftener swamp one than carry one out onto the big ocean of life.

The American grips himself, at the very sources of his consciousness, in a grip of care: and then, to so much of the rest of life, is indifferent. Whereas, the European hasn't got so much care in him, so he cares much more for life and living.

Sex and beauty are inseparable, like life and consciousness. And the intelligence which goes with sex and beauty, and arises out of sex and beauty, is intuition.

The essential function of art is moral. But a passionate, implicit morality, not didactic. A morality which changes the blood, rather than the mind.

Ethics and equity and the principles of justice do not change with the calendar.

Oh the innocent girl in her maiden teens knows perfectly well what everything means.

Satire exists for the purpose of killing the social being [for the sake of] the true individual, the real human being.

When love enters, the whole spiritual constitution of a man changes, is filled with the Holy Ghost, and almost his form is altered.

The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.

Whatever God there is is slowly eliminating the guts and alimentary system from the human being, to evolve a higher, more spiritual being.

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.

Only this shimmeriness is the real living. The shape is a dead crust. The shimmer is inside really.

Sentimentalism is the working off on yourself of feelings you haven't really got.

Men always do leave off really thinking, when the last bit of wild animal dies in them.

One could laugh at the world better if it didn't mix tender kindliness with its brutality.

Whether I get on in the world is a question; but I certainly don't get on very well with the world.

The only principle I can see in this life, is that one must forfeit the less for the greater.

If only we could live two lives: the first in which to make one's mistakes, and the second in which to profit by them.

Whatever a human being makes and makes live, it lives because of the life he puts into it.

So long as you don't feel life's paltry and a miserable business, the rest doesn't matter, happiness or unhappiness.

Life is beautiful, as long as it consumes you. When it is rushing through you, destroying you, life is gorgeous, glorious. It's when you burn a slow fire and save fuel, that life's not worth having.