Quotes from D.H. Lawrence

Sometimes life takes hold of one, carries the body along, accomplishes one's history, and yet is not real, but leaves oneself as it were slurred over.

Then she fell into that rapture of self-sacrifice, identifying herself with a God who was sacrificed, which gives to so many human souls their deepest bliss.

Her dark eyes were naked with their love, afraid, and yearning. His eyes too were dark, and they hurt her. They seemed to master her.

What is it? she pleaded softly. He lay perfectly still, only his eyes alive, and they full of torment. You know, he said at length, rather wearily, you know - we'd better break off. I was what she dreaded. Swiftly, everything seemed to darken before her eyes.

The beautiful pure freedom of a woman was infinitely more wonderful than any sexual love. The only unfortunate thing was that men lagged so far behind women in the matter. They insisted on the sex thing like dogs...And a woman had to yield. A man was like a child with his appetites. A woman had to yield him what he wanted, or like a child he would probably turn nasty and flounce away and spoil what was a very pleasant connection.

But that is how men are! Ungrateful and never satisfied. When you don't have them they hate you because you won't; and when you do have them they hate you again, for some other reason.

Look here, my dear child'—and Lady Bennerley laid her thin hand on Connie's arm. "A woman has to live her life, or live to repent not having lived it. Believe me!" And she took another sip of brandy, which maybe was her form of repentance.

Frequently he hated Miriam. He hated her as she bent forward and pored over his things. He hated her way of patiently casting him up, as if he were an endless psychological account. When he was with her, he hated her for having

This act of masculine clumsiness was the spear through the side of her love for Morel.

If he sinned, she tortured him. If he drank, and lied, was often a poltroon, sometimes a knave, she wielded the lash unmercifully.

Morality in the novel is the trembling instability of the balance. When the novelist puts his thumb in the scale, to pull down the balance to his own predilection, that is immorality.

So, in seeking to make him nobler than he could be, she destroyed him. She injured and hurt and scarred herself, but she lost none of her worth. She also had the children.

Suddenly he flung down the pencil, and was at the oven in a leap, turing the bread. For Miriam he was too quick. She started violently, and it hurt her with real pain. Even the way he crouched before the oven hurt her. There seemed to her something cruel in it, something cruel in the swift way he pitched the bread out of the. tins, caught it up again. If only he had been gentle in his movements, she would have felt so rich and warm. As it was, she was hurt.

If it be not true to me, What care I how true it be.. Though it be not true to thee, It's gay and gospel truth to me..

Was it actually her destiny to go on weaving herself into his life all the rest of her life? Nothing else? Was it just that? She was to be content to weave a steady life with him, all one fabric, but perhaps brocaded with the occasional lower of an adventure. But how could she know what she would feel next year? How could one ever know? How could one say Yes? for years and years? The little yes, gone on a breath! Why should one be pinned down by that butterfly word?

Be as promiscuous as the rabbits!' said Hammond. 'Why not? What's wrong with rabbits? Are they any worse than a neurotic, revolutionary humanity, full of nervous hate?

No, it's man that poisons the universe," she asserted.

I consider this is really the heart of England,' said Clifford to Connie, as he sat there in the dim February sunshine. 'Do you?' she said, seating herself in her blue knitted dress, on a stump by the path. 'I do! this is the old England, the heart of it; and I intend to keep it intact.' 'Oh yes!' said Connie. But, as she said it she heard the eleven-o'clock hooters at Stacks Gate colliery. Clifford was too used to the sound to notice.

He had not the faintest knowledge what it really was, but he would never have sunk so low as to confess that to his womenfolk. They listened and believed him. He believed himself.

Himself, he said, was Norman, Miriam was Gothic. She bowed in consent even to that.

Not long, my duckie

In the country all was dead still. Little stars shone high up; little stars spread far away in the floodwaters, a firmament below. Everywhere the vastness and terror of the immense night which is roused and stirred for a brief while by the day but which returns, and will remain at last eternal, holding everything in its silence and its living gloom. There was no Time, only Space.

She was slightly afraid—deeply moved and religious. That was her best state. He was impotent against it.

She was angry with him, turning everything into words. Violets were Juno's eyelids, and windflowers were on ravished brides. How she hated words, always coming between her and life: they did the ravishing, if anything did: ready-made words and phrases, sucking all the life-sap out of living things.