Quotessence
Home / Authors / D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence

D. H. Lawrence Quotes

Novelist

Filter quotes by topic

AllMenIfsLiteratureKnowsSoulWorldLoveWantHumansPeopleSexBodyLongSelfConsciousnessFeelsLifeRealShouldStills

Famous D. H. Lawrence Quotes

“If I had my way, I would build a lethal chamber as big as the Crystal Palace, with a military band playing softly, and a Cinematograph working brightly; then I'd go out in the back streets and main streets and bring them in, all the sick, the halt, and the maimed; I would lead them gently, and they would smile me a weary thanks; and the band would softly bubble out the 'Hallelujah Chorus'.”

IfsWayBigsStreetsMilitaryBandSickThanksMy WayBubblesWearyChamberPalacesCrystalsHaltChorusHallelujahMain Street
Book:The Letters of D. H. Lawrence
Create image

“Mr Hemingway does it extremely well. Nothing matters. Everything happens. One wants to keep oneself loose. Avoid one thing only: gettng connected up. Don't get connected up. If you get held by anything, break it. Don't be held. Break it, and get away. Don't get away with the idea of getting somewhere else. Just get away, for the sake of getting away. Beat it! "Well, boy, I guess I'll beat it." Ah, the pleasure in saying that”

IfsWantWellsDoeIdeasMatterHappensPleasureBoysBreakOne ThingBeatsSakeOneselfConnectedThings HappenGet AwaySomewhere ElseNothing Matters
Author:D. H. Lawrence
Create image

“I am convinced that the majority of people to-day have good, generous feelings which they can never know, never experience, because of some fear, some repression. I do not believe that people would be villains, thieves, murderers and sexual criminals if they were freed from legal restraint.”

PeopleIfsKnowsBelieveFeelingsWould BeFreedomGoodnessMajorityConvincedCriminalsGenerousVillainThievesRestraintMurdererRepression
Book:Delphi Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated)
Create image

“Anyone who is kind to man knows the fragmentariness of most men, and wants to arrange a society of power in which men fall naturally into a collective wholeness, since they cannot have an individual wholeness. In this collective wholeness they will be fulfilled. But if they make efforts at individual fulfilment, they must fail for they are by nature fragmentary.”

IfsKnowsMenWantKindFallIndividualEffortPowerFailingSocietyCollectivesIndividualismFulfilledWholenessFulfilment
Book:Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation
Create image

“It is marriage, perhaps, which had given man the best of his freedom, given him his little kingdom of his own within the big kingdom of the state.... It is a true freedom because it is a true fulfilment, for man, woman and children. Do we then want to break marriage? If we do break it, it means we all fall to a far greater extent under the direct sway of the State.”

IfsMenWantMeanChildrenLittlesStatesBigsFallGivenBreakGreaterDirectKingdomsMen WomenFulfilmentTrue Freedom
Author:D. H. Lawrence
Create image

“What sex is, we don't know, but it must be some sort of fire. For it always communicates a sense of warmth, of glow. And when this glow becomes a pure shine, then we feel the sense of beauty. We all have the fire of sex slumbering or burning inside us. If we live to be ninety, it is still there. Or, if it dies, we become one of those ghastly living corpses which are unfortunately becoming more numerous in the world.”

IfsKnowsWorldFeelsStillsDiesSexFireBecomingPureShiningCommunicateBurningWarmthNinetyCorpsesBecoming MoreGhastlyBurning Inside
Author:D. H. Lawrence
Create image

“no form of love is wrong, so long as it is love, and you yourself honour what you are doing. Love has an extraordinary variety of forms! And that is all there is in life, it seems to me. But I grant you, if you deny the variety of love you deny love altogether. If you try to specialize love into one set of accepted feelings, you wound the very soul of love. Love must be multi-form, else it is just tyranny, just death”

IfsTryingLongSoulFeelingsSeemsFormLove IsLove YouExtraordinaryDenyAcceptedWoundsTyrannyVarietyGrantsHonourForms Of Love
Book:Delphi Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated)
Create image

“It was not the passion that was new to her, it was the yearning adoration. She knew she had always feared it, for it left her helpless; she feared it still, lest if se adored him too much, then she would lose herself, become effaced, and she did not want to be effaced, a slave, like a savage woman. She must not become a slave. She feared her adoration, yet she would not at once fight against it.”

IfsWantStillsFightingPassionLeftLosesToo MuchSlaveYearningSavagesHelplessAdoration
Book:Lady Chatterley's Lover
Create image

“Human love, human trust, are always perilous, because they break down. The greater the love, the greater the trust, and the greater the peril, the greater the disaster. Because to place absolute trust on another human being is in itself a disaster, both ways, since each human being is a ship that must sail its own course, even if it go in company with another ship.... And yet, love is the greatest thing between human beings.”

IfsWayHumansCoursesHuman BeingsLove IsCompanyBreakGreaterAbsolutesDisasterShipsSailBreaking DownPerilHuman Love
Book:Kangaroo
Create image

“Lies About Love We are all liars, because The truth of yesterday becomes a lie tomorrow, Whereas letters are fixed, and we live by the letter of truth. The love I feel for my friend, this year, is different from the love I felt last year. If it were not so, it would be a lie. Yet we reiterate love! love! love! as if it were a coin with fixed value instead of a flower that dies, and opens a different bud.”

IfsFeelsYearsDifferentWould BeLastsLyingValuesDiesFeltFlowerTomorrowMy FriendsLettersYesterdayFixedLive ByLiarsLast YearCoinsBud
Book:The Works of D.H. Lawrence: With an Introduction and Bibliography
Create image

“the more i live, the more i realize what strange creatures human beings are. some of them might just as well have a hundred legs, like a centipede, or six, like a lobster. the human consistency and dignity one has been led to expect from one's fellow-man seem actually non-existent. one doubts if they exist to any startling degree even in oneself.”

IfsMenHumansWellsHas BeensSeemsMightRealizingHuman BeingsDoubtStrangeCreaturesDegreesSixHundredDignityFellowsOneselfLegsConsistencyFellow ManLobsterCentipedes
Book:Stop What You’re Doing and Read…Banned Books: Lady Chatterley's Lover & Moll Flanders
Create image

“There was a warmth of fury in his last phrases. He meant she loved him more than he her. Perhaps he could not love her. Perhaps she had not in herself that which he wanted. It was the deepest motive of her soul, this self-mistrust. It was so deep she dared neither realise nor acknowledge. Perhaps she was deficient. Like an infinitely subtle shame, it kept her always back. If it were so, she would do without him. She would never let herself want him. She would merely see.”

IfsWantSoulSelfWantedLastsShameAcknowledgePhrasesMotiveSubtleRealisingWarmthFuryMistrustWant Him
Book:The Essential D.H. Lawrence
Create image

“It was as if thousands and thousands of little roots and threads of consciousness in him and her had grown together into a tangled mass, till they could crowd no more, and the plant was dying. Now quietly, subtly, she was unravelling the tangle of his consciousness and hers, breaking the threads gently, one by one, with patience and impatience to get clear.”

IfsLittlesTogetherConsciousnessClearDyingMassRootsPlantCrowdsThreadImpatienceTangledHim And Her
Book:Delphi Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated)
Create image