Quotes by D. H. Lawrence

The world of men is dreaming, it has gone mad in its sleep, and a snake is strangling it, but it cant wake up.

I can never decide whether my dreams are the result of my thoughts, or my thoughts the result of my dreams.

It is quite true, as some poets said, that the God who created man must have had a sinister sense of humor, creating him a reasonable being, yet forcing him to take this ridiculous posture, and driving him with blind craving for this ridiculous performance.

People always make war when they say they love peace.

You dont want to love - your eternal and abnormal craving is to be loved. You arent positive, youre negative. You absorb, absorb, as if you must fill yourself up with love, because youve got a shortage somewhere.

Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what youve got to say, and say it hot.

The fairest thing in nature, a flower, still has its roots in earth and manure.

Reason is a supple nymph, and slippery as a fish by nature. She had as leave give her kiss to an absurdity any day, as to syllogistic truth. The absurdity may turn out truer.

Creation destroys as it goes, throws down one tree for the rise of another. But ideal mankind would abolish death, multiply itself million upon million, rear up city upon city, save every parasite alive, until the accumulation of mere existence is swollen to a horror.

Death is the only pure, beautiful conclusion of a great passion.

There is only one thing that a man really wants to do, all his life; and that is, to find his way to his God, his Morning Star, salute his fellow man, and enjoy the woman who has come the long way with him.

Sex and beauty are inseparable, like life and consciousness. And the intelligence which goes with sex and beauty, and arises out of sex and beauty, is intuition.

A man has no religion who has not slowly and painfully gathered one together, adding to it, shaping it; and ones religion is never complete and final, it seems, but must always be undergoing modification.

The only history is a mere question of ones struggle inside oneself. But that is the joy of it. One need neither discover Americas nor conquer nations, and yet one has as great a work as Columbus or Alexander, to do.

Life is a travelling to the edge of knowledge, then a leap taken.

The great living experience for every man is his adventure into the woman. The man embraces in the woman all that is not himself, and from that one resultant, from that embrace, comes every new action.

Men! The only animal in the world to fear.

Tragedy is like strong acid - it dissolves away all but the very gold of truth.

Design in art, is a recognition of the relation between various things, various elements in the creative flux. You cant invent a design. You recognize it, in the fourth dimension. That is, with your blood and your bones, as well as with your eyes.

Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of the critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.