D.H. Lawrence (September 11, 1885 - March 2, 1930) is best known for his infamous novel Lady Chatterley's Lover, which was banned in the United States until 1959, and is widely regarded as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. (Click here for full biography.com article)
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America is neither free nor brave, but a land of tight, iron- clanking little wills, everybody trying to put it over everybody else, and a land of men absolutely devoid of the real courage of trust, trust in life's sacred spontaneity. They can't trust life until they can control it.
Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot.
But better die than live mechanically a life that is a repetition of repetitions.
Consciousness is an end in itself. We torture ourselves getting somewhere, and when we get there it is nowhere, for there is nowhere to get to.
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.
Ethics and equity and the principles of justice do not change with the calendar.
Every man has a mob self and an individual self, in varying proportions.
God is only a great imaginative experience.
I like to write when I feel spiteful; it's like having a good sneeze.
I never saw a wild thing
Sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop
frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.
I shall be glad when you have strangled the invincible respectability that dogs your steps.
I want to live my life so that my nights are not full of regrets.
It's bad taste to be wise all the time, like being at a perpetual funeral.
Life is a travelling to the edge of knowledge, then a leap taken.
Life is ours to be spent, not to be saved.
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.
Money poisons you when you've got it, and starves you when you haven't.
Ours is an excessively conscious age. We know so much, we feel so little.
Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.
The dead don't die. They look on and help.
The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic and a killer.
The fairest thing in nature, a flower, still has its roots in earth and manure.
There is no such thing as liberty. You only change one sort of domination for another. All we can do is to choose our master.
There's always the hyena of morality at the garden gate, and the real wolf at the end of the street.
They say geniuses mostly have great mothers. They mostly have sad fates.
To the Puritan all things are impure, as somebody says.
Tragedy is like strong acid- it dissolves away all but the very gold of truth.
Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord, but women are my favorite vessels of wrath.
We have to hate our immediate predecessors to get free from their authority.
What is pornography to one man may be the laughter of genius to another.
When one jumps over the edge, one is bound to land somewhere.
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(September 11 is also the birthday of Kevin G. Barkes.)
Categories: D.H. Lawrence, Quotes of the day
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