Famous Quotes by D. H. Lawrence (88 Quotations)

How beautiful maleness is, if it finds its right expression.

D. H. Lawrence – [Men]

I am sure no other civilization, not even the Romans, has showed such a vast proportion of ignominious and degraded nudity, and ugly, squalid dirty sex. Because no other civilization has driven sex into the underworld, and nudity to the W.C.

D. H. Lawrence – [Sex]

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.

D. H. Lawrence – [Adulthood]

I believe that a man is converted when first he hears the low, vast murmur of life, of human life, troubling his hitherto unconscious self.

D. H. Lawrence – [Conversion]

I can't bear art that you can walk round and admire. A book should be either a bandit or a rebel or a man in the crowd.

D. H. Lawrence – [Books and Reading]

I can't do with mountains at close quarters — they are always in the way, and they are so stupid, never moving and never doing anything but obtrude themselves.

D. H. Lawrence – [Mountains]

I cannot be a materialist — but Oh, how is it possible that a God who speaks to all hearts can let Belgravia go laughing to a vicious luxury, and Whitechapel cursing to a filthy debauchery — such suffering, such dreadful suffering — and shall the short years of Christ's mission atone for it all?

D. H. Lawrence – [God]

I cannot cure myself of that most woeful of youth's follies — thinking that those who care about us will care for the things that mean much to us.

D. H. Lawrence – [Taste]

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.

D. H. Lawrence – [Names]

I hate the actor and audience business. An author should be in among the crowd, kicking their shins or cheering them on to some mischief or merriment.

D. H. Lawrence – [Writers and Writing]

I hold that the parentheses are by far the most important parts of a non-business letter.

D. H. Lawrence – [Letters]

I like to write when I feel spiteful. It is like having a good sneeze.

D. H. Lawrence – [Writers and Writing]

I love Italian opera — it's so reckless. Damn Wagner, and his bellowings at Fate and death. Damn Debussy, and his averted face. I like the Italians who run all on impulse, and don't care about their immortal souls, and don't worry about the ultimate.

D. H. Lawrence – [Opera]

I shall always be a priest of love.

D. H. Lawrence – [Love]

I shall be glad when you have strangled the invincible respectability that dogs your steps.

D. H. Lawrence – [Respectability]

I want relations which are not purely personal, based on purely personal qualities; but relations based upon some unanimous accord in truth or belief, and a harmony of purpose, rather than of personality. I am weary of personality. Let us be easy and impersonal, not forever fingering over our own souls, and the souls of our acquaintances, but trying to create a new life, a new common life, a new complete tree of life from the roots that are within us.

D. H. Lawrence – [Relationships]

If a woman hasn't got a tiny streak of a harlot in her, she's a dry stick as a rule.

D. H. Lawrence – [Prostitution]

It is all a question of sensitiveness. Brute force and overbearing may make a terrific effect. But in the end, that which lives by delicate sensitiveness. If it were a question of brute force, not a single human baby would survive for a fortnight. It is the grass of the field, most frail of all things, that supports all life all the time. But for the green grass, no empire would rise, no man would eat bread: for grain is grass; and Hercules or Napoleon or Henry Ford would alike be denied existence.

D. H. Lawrence – [Sensitivity]

It is so much more difficult to live with one's body than with one's soul. One's body is so much more exacting: what it won't have it won't have, and nothing can make bitter into sweet.

D. H. Lawrence – [Body]

Life and love are life and love, a bunch of violets is a bunch of violets, and to drag in the idea of a point is to ruin everything. Live and let live, love and let love, flower and fade, and follow the natural curve, which flows on, pointless.

D. H. Lawrence – [Love]