D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrencewas an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works, among other things, represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation. In them, some of the issues Lawrence explores are emotional health, vitality, spontaneity and instinct...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth11 September 1885
ocean our-world air
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.
ocean cities swamps
Towns oftener swamp one than carry one out onto the big ocean of life.
life hurt ocean
We only seem to learn from Life that Life doesn't matter so much as it seemed to do - it's not so burningly important, after all, what happens. We crawl, like blinking sea-creatures, out of the Ocean onto a spur of rock, we creep over the promontory bewildered and dazzled and hurting ourselves, then we drop in the ocean on the other side: and the little transit doesn't matter so much.
noise outside secret sensitive
Is it the secret of the long-nosed Etruscans?/ The long-nosed, sensitive footed, subtly-smiling Etruscans, / Who made so little noise outside the cypress groves?
alone capable people perhaps
Perhaps only those people who are capable of real togetherness have that look of being alone in the world.
knowledge life living man meeting men-and-women source
The source of all life and knowledge is in man and woman, and the source of all living is in the interchange and the meeting and mingling of these two: man-life and woman-life, man-knowledge and woman-knowledge, man-being and woman-being.
past race
Every race which has become self-conscious and idea-bound in the past has perished.
build change event man marriage perpetual souls themselves woman
Marriage is a long event of perpetual change in which a man and a woman mutually build up their souls and make themselves whole.
bird broad flying wings
I think more of a bird with broad wings flying and lapsing through the air, than anything, when I think of metre.
heart hopeful john lady says thomas
John Thomas says goodnight to Lady Jane, a little droopingly, but with a hopeful heart
darkness love separate ultimate unknowable
Man's ultimate love for man? Yes, yes, but only in the separate darkness of man's love for the present, unknowable God.
flooding life submit unless
Unless we submit our will to the flooding of life, there is no life in us.
form living religious social state
We know that we are living in a state of falsity, that all our social and religious form is dead, a crystallized lie.
profit second seem
If only we could have two lives: the first in which to make one's mistakes, which seem as if they have to be made; and the second in which to profit by them.