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D. H. Lawrence

D. H. Lawrence Quotes

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Famous D. H. Lawrence Quotes

“For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. Whatever the unborn may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh. The dead may look after the afterwards. But the magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time.”

KnowsMenLifeLooksMayBodyAliveFlowerBirdFleshSupremeTriumphBeastMortalityMagnificentHere And NowUnborn
Book:Apocalypse
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“The real trouble about women is that they must always go on trying to adapt themselves to men's theories of women, as they alwayshave done. When a woman is thoroughly herself, she is being what her type of man wants her to be. When a woman is hysterical it's because she doesn't quite know what to be, which pattern to follow, which man's picture of woman to live up to.”

KnowsMenWantTryingRealDoneWomenTroubleTheoryTypeGoes OnPatternsIdealismHysterical
Book:Delphi Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated)
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“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)
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“When van Gogh paints sunflowers, he reveals, or achieves, the vivid relation between himself, as man, and the sunflower, as sunflower, at that quick moment of time. His painting does not represent the sunflower itself. We shall never know what the sunflower itself is. And the camera will visualize the sunflower far more perfectly than van Gogh can.”

KnowsMenDoeMomentsAchievePaintingPhotographyRelationCamerasPaintVansVividSunflower
Book:Delphi Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated)
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“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
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“The lion shall never lie down with the lamb. The lion eternally shall devour the lamb, the lamb eternally shall be devoured. Man knows the great consummation in the flesh, the sensual ecstasy, and that is eternal. Also the spiritual ecstasy of unanimity, that is eternal. But the two are separate and never to be confused.”

KnowsMenTwoSpiritualLyingEternalOppositesFleshSensualitySensualConfusedEcstasyLionsLambsNever LieUnanimity
Book:Twilight in Italy and Other Essays
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“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
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“When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego, and when we escape like squirrels turning in the cages of our personality and get into the forests again, we shall shiver with cold and fright but things will happen to us so that we don't know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in, and passion will make our bodies taut with power, we shall stamp our feet with new power and old things will fall down, we shall laugh, and institutions will curl up like burnt paper.”

KnowsBodyHappensFallPassionLaughingFeetColdPersonalityEgoPaperInstitutionsGlassesForestsBottlesCagesStampsFalling DownFrightCurlsSquirrelsShiverOld Things
Book:The Works of D.H. Lawrence: With an Introduction and Bibliography
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“But having more freedom she only became more profoundly aware of the big want. She wanted so many things. She wanted to read great, beautiful books, and be rich with them; she wanted to see beautiful things, and have the joy of them for ever; she wanted to know big, free people; and there remained always the want she could put no name to? It was so difficult. There were so many things, so much to meet and surpass. And one never knew where one was going.”

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Book:Delphi Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated)
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“The cosmos is a vast living body, of which we are still parts. The sun is a great heart whose tremors run through our smallest veins. The moon is a great nerve center from which we quiver forever. Who knows the power that Saturn has over us, or Venus? But it is a vital power, rippling exquisitely through us all the time.”

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Book:Delphi Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated)
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“I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea. My soul knows that I am part of the human race, my soul is an organic part of the great human race, as my spirit is part of my nation. In my own very self, I am part of my family.”

KnowsHumansSoulSelfEyeEarthSpiritNationsMy OwnRaceFamilySunBloodSeaFeetMy FamilyMy SoulHuman Race
Book:Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation
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“I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea. There is not any part of me that is alone and absolute except my mind, and we shall find that the mind has no existence by itself, it is only the glitter of the sun on the surfaces of the water.”

KnowsMindEyeEarthWaterExistenceSunBloodSeaFeetAbsolutesSurfaceGlitterInterdependence
Book:Delphi Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated)
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“The Moon is a white strange world, great, white, soft-seeming globe in the night sky, and what she actually communicates to me across space I shall never fully know. But the Moon that pulls the tides, and the Moon that controls the menstrual periods of women, and the Moon that touches the lunatics, she is not the mere dead lump of the astronomist. . . . When we describe the Moon as dead, we are describing the deadness in ourselves. When we find space so hideously void, we are describing our own unbearable emptiness.”

KnowsWorldNightSpaceWhiteSkyStrangePeriodsMoonMereCommunicateEmptinessVoidTidesGlobesUnbearableDescribingSeemingNight SkyLumpsStrange World
Book:Selected Poems of D.h. Lawrence
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“Behold then Septimus Dodge returning to Dodge-town victorious. Not crowned with laurel, it is true, but wreathed in lists of things he has seen and sucked dry. Seen and sucked dry, you know: Venus de Milo, the Rhine or the Coliseum: swallowed like so many clams, and left the shells.”

KnowsLeftSocietyTravelTownsListsDryShellsTourismVenusLaurelsDodgeTravel And TourismClamsColiseumVenus De Milo
Book:Delphi Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated)
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