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D. H. Lawrence

D. H. Lawrence Quotes

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“To our senses, the elements are four and have ever been, and will ever be for they are the elements of life, of poetry, and of perception, the four Great Ones, the Four Roots, the First Four of Fire and the Wet, Earth and the wide Air of the World. To find the other many elements, you must go to the laboratory and hunt them down. But the four we have always with us, they are our world. Or rather, they have us with them.”

WorldFirstsEarthScienceFireFourAirElementsPerceptionRootsWideSensesOur WorldWetHuntsLaboratoryGreat OnesElements Of Life
Book:Delphi Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated)
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“It seems to me absolutely true, that our world, which appears to us the surface of all things, is really the bottom of a deep ocean: all our trees are submarine growths, and we are weird, scaly-clad submarine fauna, feeding ourselves on offal like shrimps. Only occasionally the soul rises gasping through the fathomless fathoms under which we live, far up to the surface of the ether, where there is true air.”

WorldSoulSeemsGrowthAirTreeOceanAll ThingsBottomSurfaceOur WorldFeedingFathomSubmarinesShrimpDeep OceanOffal
Book:Delphi Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated)
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“Melville had to fight, fight against the existing world, against his own very self. Only he would never quite put the knife in the heart of his paradisal ideal. Somehow, somewhere, somewhen, love should be a fulfillment, and life should be a thing of bliss. That was his fixed ideal. Fata Morgana. That was the pin he tortured himself on, like a pinned-down butterfly.”

WorldShouldHeartSelfFightingIdealsFulfillmentFixedBlissKnivesButterflyNever QuitPinsMelvilleMorgana
Book:Delphi Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated)
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“We can understand that the Fathers of the Church in the East wanted Apocalypse left out of the New Testament. But like Judas among the disciples, it was inevitable that it should be included. The Apocalypse is the feet of clay to the grand Christian image. And down crashes the image, on the weakness of these very feet. There is Jesus--but there is also John the Divine. There is Christian love--and there is Christian envy. The former would "save" the world--the latter will never be satisfied till it has destroyed the world. They are two sides of the same medal.”

WorldShouldTwoWantedChristianFatherJesusLeftSidesChurchFeetDivineWeaknessEnvyEastSatisfiedDestroyedFormerInevitableLatterCrashDiscipleTestamentApocalypseClayMedalNew TestamentTwo SidesSave The WorldLeft OutChristian LoveJudas
Book:Apocalypse
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“And still I look for the men who will dare to be roses of England wild roses of England men who are wild roses of England with metal thorns, beware! but still more brave and still more rare the courage of rosiness in a cabbage world fragrance of roses in a stale stink of lies rose-leaves to bewilder the clever fools and rose-briars to strangle the machine.”

MenWorldLooksStillsLyingHe ManFoolMachinesEnglandBraveRoseDareCleverMetalsFragranceThornsStinkStaleCabbageBriarsWild Roses
Book:Complete Poems by Lawrence: Easyread Super Large 24pt Edition
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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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“I believe a man is born first unto himself - for the happy developing of himself, while the world is a nursery, and the pretty things are to be snatched for, and pleasant things tasted; some people seem to exist thus right to the end. But most are born again on entering manhood; then they are born to humanity, to a consciousness of all the laughing, and the never-ceasing murmur of pain and sorrow that comes from the terrible multitudes of brothers.”

PeopleMenWorldFirstsBelieveEndsSeemsPainHumanityI BelieveBornConsciousnessLaughingHuman NatureBrotherTerribleSorrowAdversityDevelopingPleasantAdulthoodMultitudesManhoodEnteringBorn AgainNurseryPain And SorrowPleasant ThingsPretty Things
Book:The Selected Letters of D. H. Lawrence
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“She wished some help would come from outside. But in the whole world there was no help. Society was terrible because it was insane. Civilized society is insane. Money and so-called love are its two great manias; money a long way first. The individual asserts himself in his disconnected insanity in these two modes: money and love.”

WorldWayFirstsLongTwoWholeHelpingIndividualTerribleDepressionAnd LoveIllnessWhole WorldMental IllnessInsaneInsanityGreat MenCivilizedLong WayDisconnectedManiaCivilized SocietyLove And Money
Book:Delphi Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated)
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“After all, the world is not a stage-not to me: nor a theatre: nor a show-house of any sort. And art, especially novels, are not little theatres where the reader sits aloft and watches...and sighs, commiserates, condones and smiles. That's what you want a book to be: because it leaves you so safe and superior, with your two-dollar ticket to the show. And that's what my books are not and never will be...Whoever reads me will be in the thick of the scrimmage, and if he doesn't like it if he wants a safe seat in the audience-let him read someone else.”

IfsWorldWantLittlesArtTwoBookShowsReadingHouseWatchesNovelAudienceStageReaderSafeDollarsTheatreWhat You WantSuperiorsSeatsThickTicketsSigh
Author:D. H. Lawrence
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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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“I don't like your miserable lonely single front name. It is so limited, so meager; it has no versatility; it is weighted down with the sense of responsibility; it is worn threadbare with much use; it is as bad as having only one jacket and one hat; it is like having only one relation, one blood relation, in the world. Never set a child afloat on the flat sea of life with only one sail to catch the wind.”

WorldChildrenUseNamesResponsibilityBloodSeaFrontsWindLike YouLonelyRelationMiserableHatsFlatsWornSailJacketsSense Of ResponsibilityVersatilityBlood Relation
Author:D. H. Lawrence
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