Quotes from D.H. Lawrence

They were so intimate, and utterly out of touch.

Make money! Make it! Out of nowhere. Wring it out of the thin air! The last feat to be humanly proud of!

Well, if one had to prostitute oneself, let it be to a bitch-goddess!

Do you think one can only care once?' she asked. 'Or never. Most women never care, never begin to. They don't know what it means. Nor men either. But when I see a woman as cares, my heart stands still for her.

What man in his senses would say such things to a woman! But men aren't in their senses. What man with a spark of honour would put this ghastly burden of life-responsibility upon a woman, and leave her there, in the void?

We bust apart, and say spiteful things about one another, like all the other damned intellectuals in the world. Damned everybodies, as far as that goes, for they all do it. Else we bust apart, and cover up the spiteful things we feel against one another by saying false sugaries. It's a curious thing that the mental life seems to flourish with its roots in spite, ineffable and fathomless spite.

Sufficient unto the moment is the appearanceof reality.

You say a man's got no brain, when he's a fool: and no heart, when he's mean; and no stomach when he's a funker. And when he's got none of that spunky wild bit of a man in him, you say he's got no balls. When he's sort of tame.

All the great words, it seemed to Connie, were cancelled for her generation: love, joy, happiness, home, mother, father, husband, all these great, dynamic words were half dead now, and dying from day to day.

Só a juventude conhece o sabor da imortalidade.

Then there are the sort that are just dead inside. Dead. And they know it.

And again, there was the wage-squabble. Having lived among the owning classes, he knew the utter futility of expecting any solution of the wage-squabble. There was no solution, short of death. The only thing was not to care, not to care about the wages. Yet, if you were poor and wretched you had to care. Anyhow, it was becoming the only thing they did care about. The care about money was like a great cancer, eating away the individuals of all classes. He refused to care about money.

It was words, just so many words. The only reality was nothingness, and over it a hypocrisy of words.

And are you sorry?' she said. `In a way!' he replied, looking up at the sky. `I thought I'd done with it all. Now I've begun again.' `Begun what?' `Life.' `Life!' she re-echoed, with a queer thrill. `It's life,' he said. `There's no keeping clear. And if you do keep clear you might almost as well die. So if I've got to be broken open again, I have.' She did not quite see it that way, but still `It's just love,' she said cheerfully. `Whatever that may be,' he replied.

Miriam entered. All alone? she said. Yes. As if at home, she took off her tam o'shanter and her long coat, hanging them up. It gave him a thrill. This might be their own house, his and hers.

It is far, far better to read one book six times, at intervals, than to read six several books. Because if a certain book can call you to read it six times, it will be a deeper and deeper experience each time, and will enrich the whole soul, emotional and mental. Whereas six books read once only are merely an accumulation of superficial interests , the burdensome accumulation of modern days, quantity without real value.

Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically .

The final fact being that at the very bottom of his soul he was an outsider, and anti-social, and he accepted the fact inwardly, no matter how Bond-Streety he was on the outside. His isolation was a necessity to him; just as the appearance of conformity and mixing-in with the smart people was also a necessity.

I don't hate men because they're men, as nuns do. I dislike them because they're not men enough: babies, and playboys, and poor things showing off all the time, even to themselves. I don't say I'm any better. I only wish, with all my soul, that some men were bigger and stronger and deeper than I am...

It did seem as if Hermione, like the moon, had only one side to her penny. There was no obverse. She stared out all the time on the narrow, but to her, complete world of the extant consciousness. In the darkness, she did not exist.

Light, old boy? said Beatrice, tilting her cigarette at him. He bent forward to her to light his cigarette at hers. She was winking at him as he did so. Miriam saw his eyes trembling with mischief, and his full, almost sensual mouth quivering. He was not himself, and she could not bear it. As he was now, she had no connection with him, she might as well not have existed. She saw the cigarette dancing on his full red lips. She hated his thick hair for being tumbled loose on his forehead.

She egged me on to poetry and reading: in a way, she made a man of me. I read and I thought like a house on fire, for her.

One was less in love with the boy afterwards, and a little inclined to hate him, as if he had trespassed on one's privacy and inner freedom.

The refinements of passion, the extravagances of sensuality! And necessary, forever necessary, to burn out false shames and smelt out the heaviest ore of the body into purity. With the fire of sheer sensuality.