Quotes from DH Lawrence

That was all her prayer—not for his soul or his righteousness, but that he might not be wasted. And while he slept, for hours and hours, she thought and prayed for him.

They want me in Lime Street on Monday week, mother, he cried, his eyes blazing, as he read the letter. Mrs Morel felt everything go silent inside her. ... It never occurred to him that she might be more hurt of his going away, than glad of his success.

There was no Time, only Space. Who could say his mother had lived and did not live? She had been in one place, and was in another, that was all. And his soul could not leave her, wherever she was. Now she was gone abroad into the night, and he was with her still. They were together.

One realises, with horror, that the race of men is almost extinct in Europe. Only Christ-like heroes and woman-worshipping Don Juans, and rabid equality-mongrels. The old, hardy, indomitable male is gone. His fierce singleness is quenched. The last sparks are dying out in Sardinia and Spain. Nothing left but the herd-proletariat and the herd-equality mongrelism, and the wistful poisonous self-sacrificial cultured soul. How detestable

I believe in being warm-hearted. I believe especially in being warm-hearted in love, in fucking with a warm heart. I believe if men could fuck with warm hearts, and the women take it warm-heartedly, everything would come all right.

If we sip the wine, we find dreams coming upon us out of the imminent night.

He looked in humiliation, anger, wariness and misery at Connie. "Ma lass!" he said. "The world's goin' to put salt on thy tail." "Not if we don't let it," she said.

So he smiled to himself, for a dangerous phenomenon in the world is a man of narrow belief, who denies the right of his neighbour to be alone.

She had passed by. He felt as if he were walking again in a far world, not Cossethay, a far world, the fragile reality. He went on, quiet, suspended, rarefied. He could not bear to think or to speak, nor make any sound or sign, nor change his fixed motion. He could scarcely bear to think of her face. He moved within the knowledge of her, in the world that was beyond reality.

When did one come to an end? In which direction was it finished? There was no end, no finish, only this roaring vast space. Did one never get old, never die? That was the clue.

And again the dread of the night came on him. He was a net-work of nerves, and when he was not braced up to work, and so full of energy: or when he was not listening-in, and so utterly neuter: then he was haunted by anxiety and a sense of dangerous, impending void. He was afraid. And Connie could keep the fear off him, if she would. But it was obvious she wouldn't, she wouldn't.

The real joy of a book lies in reading it over and over again, and always finding it different, coming upon another meaning, another level of meaning.