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D. H. Lawrence

[David Herbert Lawrence] (1885-1938) English novelist, poet, and essayist whose work condemned industrial society and explored sexual relationships

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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.

– D. H. Lawrence

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I have never seen a wild thing feel sorry for itself. A little bird will fall dead, frozen from a bough, without ever having felt sorry for itself.

– D. H. Lawrence

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I want to live my life so that my nights are not full of regrets.

– D. H. Lawrence

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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

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Life is ours to be spent, not to be saved.

– D. H. Lawrence

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Myth is an attempt to narrate a whole human experience, of which the purpose is too deep, going too deep in the blood and soul, for mental explanation or description.

– D. H. Lawrence

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But then peace, peace I am so mistrustful of it so much afraid that it means a sort of weakness and giving in.

– D. H. Lawrence

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One watches them on the seashore, all the people, and there is something pathetic, almost wistful in them, as if they wished their lives did not add up to this scaly nullity of possession, but as if they could not escape. It is a dragon that has devoured us all: these obscene, scaly houses, this insatiable struggle and desire to possess, to possess always and in spite of everything, this need to be an owner, lest one be owned. It is too hideous and nauseating. Owners and owned, they are like the two sides of a ghastly disease. One feels a sort of madness come over one, as if the world had become hell. But it is only superimposed: it is only a temporary disease. It can be cleaned away.

– D. H. Lawrence

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But better die than live mechanically a life that is a repetition of repetitions.

– D. H. Lawrence

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

– D. H. Lawrence

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Brute force crushes many plants. Yet the plants rise again. The Pyramids will not last a moment compared with the daisy. And before Buddha or Jesus spoke the nightingale sang, and long after the words of Jesus and Buddha are gone into oblivion the nightingale still will sing. Because it is neither preaching nor commanding nor urging. It is just singing. And in the beginning was not a Word, but a chirrup.

– D. H. Lawrence

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For whereas the mind works in possibilities, the intuitions work in actualities, and what you intuitively desire, that is possible to you. Whereas what you mentally or "consciously" desire is nine times out of ten impossible; hitch your wagon to star, or you will just stay where you are.

– D. H. Lawrence

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

– 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.

– D. H. Lawrence

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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

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I do esteem individual liberty above everything. What is a nation for, but to secure the maximum liberty to every individual?

– D. H. Lawrence

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It is a fine thing to establish one's own religion in one's heart, not to be dependent on tradition and second-hand ideals. Life will seem to you, later, not a lesser, but a greater thing.

– D. H. Lawrence

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Literature is a toil and a snare, a curse that bites deep.

– D. H. Lawrence

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Love is the flower of life, and blossoms unexpectedly and without law, and must be plucked where it is found, and enjoyed for the brief hour of its duration.

– D. H. Lawrence

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Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grand-children are once more slaves.

– D. H. Lawrence

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My God, these folks don't know how to love -- that's why they love so easily.

– D. H. Lawrence

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The great virtue in life is real courage that knows how to face facts and live beyond them.

– D. H. Lawrence

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The human soul needs actual beauty more than bread.

– D. H. Lawrence

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The mind can assert anything and pretend it has proved it. My beliefs I test on my body, on my intuitional consciousness, and when I get a response there, then I accept.

– D. H. Lawrence

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The one woman who never gives herself is your free woman, who is always giving herself.

– D. H. Lawrence

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The world of men is dreaming, it has gone mad in its sleep, and a snake is strangling it, but it can't wake up.

– D. H. Lawrence

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Try to find your deepest issue in every confusion, and abide by that.

– D. H. Lawrence

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We and the cosmos are one. The cosmos is a vast body, of which we are still parts. The sun is a great heart whose tremors run through our smallest veins. The moon is a great gleaming nerve-centre from which we quiver forever. Who knows the power that Saturn has over us or Venus But it is a vital power, rippling exquisitely through us all the time... Now all this is literally true, as men knew in the great past and as they will know again.

– D. H. Lawrence

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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.

– D. H. Lawrence

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We ought to dance with rapture that we might be alive - and part of the living, incarnate cosmos.

– D. H. Lawrence

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Why doesn't the past decently bury itself, instead of sitting waiting to be admired by the present

– D. H. Lawrence

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