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
D. H. Lawrence quotes about
abhorrent act art cannot goes michael touch unseen work
I feel I cannot touch humanity, even in thought, it is abhorrent to me. But a work of art is an act of faith, as Michael Angelo says, and one goes on writing, to the unseen witnesses.
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.
actual attempts crazy experience fixed illustrate museum order rigged theories unsound vital wants
Museums, museums, museums, object-lessons rigged out to illustrate the unsound theories of archaeologists, crazy attempts to co-ordinate and get into a fixed order that which has no fixed order and will not be co-coordinated! It is sickening! Why must all experience be systematized? A museum is not a first-hand contact: it is an illustrated lecture. And what one wants is the actual vital touch.
fear real new-experiences
The world fears a new experience more than it fears anything. Because a new experience displaces so many old experiences. . . . The world doesn't fear a new idea. It can pigeon-hole any idea. But it can't pigeon-hole a real new experience.
bud soft
And now he's tiny, and soft like a little bud of life!
english forty poets time
The English kill off all their poets by the time they're forty
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.
holy humble
Too much of the humble Willy wet-leg / And the holy can't-help-it touch.
genuine hot moves passion
When genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot
flooding life submit unless
Unless we submit our will to the flooding of life, there is no life in us.
dark men egypt
Previously, even in Egypt, men had not learned to see straight. They fumbled in the dark, and didn't quite know where they were, or what they were. Like men in a dark room, they only felt their existence surging in the darkness of other creatures. We, however, have learned to see ourselves for what we are, as the sun sees us. The Kodak bears witness.
fashion names labels
I'd be ashamed to see a woman walking around with my name-label on her, address and railway station, like a wardrobe trunk.
forever body forget
Necessary, forever necessary, to burn out false shames and smelt the heaviest ore of the body into purity.
animal love-is men
The Aztec gods and goddesses are, as far as we have known anything about them, an unlovely and unlovable lot. In their myths there is no grace or charm, no poetry. Only this perpetual grudge, grudge, grudging, one god grudging another, the gods grudging men their existence, and men grudging the animals. The goddess of love is goddess of dirt and prostitution, a dirt-eater, a horror, without a touch of tenderness...