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Let Man Only Approach His Own Self With A Deep Respect, Even Reverence For All That The Creative Soul, The God-mystery Within Us, Puts Forth. Then We Shall All Be Sound And Free. Lewdness Is Hateful Because It Impairs Our Integrity And Our Proud Being. The Creative, Spontaneous Soul Sends Forth Its Promptings Of Desire And Aspiration In Us. These Promptings Are Our True Fate, Which Is Our Business To Fulfill. A Fate Dictated From Outside, From Theory Or From Circumstance, Is A False Fate.

-D. H. Lawrence

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Let Man Only Approach

D. H. Lawrence

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Let Man Only Approach His Own Self With A Deep Respect, Even Reverence For All That The Creative Soul, The God-mystery Within Us, Puts Forth. Then We Shall All Be Sound And Free. Lewdness Is Hateful Because It Impairs Our Integrity And Our Proud Being. The Creative, Spontaneous Soul Sends Forth Its Promptings Of Desire And Aspiration In Us. These Promptings Are Our True Fate, Which Is Our Business To Fulfill. A Fate Dictated From Outside, From Theory Or From Circumstance, Is A False Fate.

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But Better Die Than Live Mechanically A Life That Is A Repetition Of Repetitions.

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A Man Has No Religion Who Has Not Slowly And Painfully Gathered One Together, Adding To It, Shaping It; And One's Religion Is Never Complete And Final, It Seems, But Must Always Be Undergoing Modification.

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The Spirit Of The Place Is A Strange Thing. Our Mechanical Age Tries To Override It. But It Does Not Succeed. In The End The Strange, Sinister Spirit Of The Place, So Diverse And Adverse In Differing Places, Will Smash Our Mechanical Oneness Into Smithereens.

But That Is How Men Are! Ungrateful And Never Satisfied. When You Don't Have Them They Hate You Because You Won't; And When You Do Have Them They Hate You Again, For Some Other Reason. Or For No Reason At All, Except That They Are Discontented Children, And Can't Be Satisfied Whatever They Get, Let A Woman Do What She May.

I Want To Live My Life So That My Nights Are Not Full Of Regrets.

I See A Redness Suddenly Come Into The Evening's Anxious Breast-- 'tis The Wound Of Love Goes Home!

Religion Was Fading Into The Background. He Had Shovelled Away All The Beliefs That Would Hamper Him, Had Cleared The Ground, And Come More Or Less To The Bedrock Of Belief That One Should Feel Inside Oneself For Right Or Wrong, And Should Have The Patience To Gradually Realise One's God. Now Life Interested Him More.

[during The Renaissance] The Italians Said, "we Are One In The Father: We Will Go Back." The Northern Races Said, "we Are One In Christ, We Will Go On.

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.

Psychoanalysis Is Out, Under A Therapeutic Disguise, To Do Away Entirely With The Moral Faculty In Man.

Nobody Knows You. You Don't Know Yourself. And I, Who Am Half In Love With You, What Am I In Love With? My Own Imaginings?

Love's A Dog In A Manger.

Gods Should Be Iridescent, Like The Rainbow In The Storm. Man Creates A God In His Own Image, And The Gods Grow Old Along With The Men That Made Them... But The God-stuff Roars Eternally, Like The Sea, With Too Vast A Sound To Be Heard.

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Now Go Away Then, And Leave Me Alone. I Don't Want Any More Of Your Meretricious Persiflage.

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A Book Lives As Long As It Is Unfathomed.

My Soul Is My Great Asset And My Great Misfortune.

Ursula And Gudrun Brangwen Sat One Morning In The Window-bay Of Their Father's House In Beldover, Working And Talking.

A Man Will Part With Anything So Long As He's Drunk, And You're Drunk With Him.

Be Careful, Then, And Be Gentle About Death. For It Is Hard To Die, It Is Difficult To Go Through The Door, Even When It Opens.

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Without Secrecy There Would Be No Pornography. But Secrecy And Modesty Are Two Utterly Different Things.

Shall I Tell You What You Have That Other Men Don't?.... It's The Courage Of Your Own Tenderness.

The World Is A Raving Idiot, And No Man Can Kill It: Though I’ll Do My Best. But You’re Right. We Must Rescue Ourselves As Best We Can.

Gods Die With Men Who Have Conceived Them. But The God-stuff Roars Eternally, Like The Sea, With Too Vast A Sound To Be Heard.

I Can't Do With Mountains At Close Quarters - They Are Always In The Way, And They Are So Stupid, Never Moving And Never Doing Anything But Obtrude Themselves.

The Mind Has No Existence By Itself; It Is Only The Glitter Of The Sun On The Surface Of The Waters.

The Sphinx-riddle. Solve It, Or Be Torn To Bits, Is The Decree.

The Only Rule Is, Do What You Really, Impulsively, Wish To Do. But Always Act On Your Own Responsibility, Sincerely. And Have The Courage Of Your Own Strong Emotion.

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The Horse, The Horse! The Symbol Of Surging Potency And Power Of Movement, Of Action.

It's Terrible, Once You've Got A Man Into Your Blood!" She Said.

If A Novel Reveals True And Vivid Relationships, It Is A Moral Work, No Matter What The Relationships Consist In. If The Novelisthonours The Relationship In Itself, It Will Be A Great Novel.

People Always Make War When They Say They Love Peace.

I Believe The Nearest I've Come To Perfect Love Was With A Young Coal-miner When I Was About 16.

We Have Buried So Much Of The Delicate Magic Of Life.

The Essential American Soul Is Hard, Isolate, Stoic, And A Killer. It Has Never Yet Melted.

Patience! Patience! The World Is A Vast And Ghastly Intricacy Of Mechanism, And One Has To Be Very Wary, Not To Get Mangled By It.

Brave People Add Up To An Aristocracy. The Democracy Of Thou-shalt-not Is Bound To Be A Collection Of Weak Men.

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A Woman Needn't Be Dragged Down By Her Functions.

For To Desire Is Better Than To Possess, The Finality Of The End Was Dreaded As Deeply As It Was Desired.

The Upshot Was, My Paintings Must Burn That English Artists Might Finally Learn.

The Sense Of Wonder, That Is Our Sixth Sense.

Sense Of Wonder

I Shall Be Glad When You Have Strangled The Invincible Respectability That Dogs Your Steps.

A Circle Swoop, And A Quick Parabola Under The Bridge Arches Where Light Pushes Through; A Sudden Turning Upon Itself Of A Thing In The Air. A Dip To The Water.

Life Is A Travelling To The Edge Of Knowledge, Then A Leap Taken.

Who Knows The Power That Saturn Has Over Us, Or Venus? But It Is A Vital Power, Rippling Exquisitely Through Us All The Time.

So As Long As You Can Forget Your Body You Are Happy And The Moment You Begin To Be Aware Of Your Body, You Are Wretched. So If Civilization Is Any Good, It Has To Help Us Forget Our Bodies, And Then Time Passes Happily Without Our Knowing It. Help Us Get Rid Of Our Bodies Altogether.

And To My Lips' Bright Crimson Rim The Passion Slips, And Down My Slim White Body Drips The Shining Hymn.

The Love Between Man And Woman Is The Greatest And Most Complete Passion The World Will Ever See, Because It Is Dual, Because It Is Of Two Opposing Kinds.

The Mystery Of The Evening-star Brilliant In Silence And Distance Between The Downward-surging Plunge Of The Sun And The Vast, Hollow Seething Of Inpouring Night. The Magnificence Of The Watchful Morning-star, That Watches Between The Night And The Day, The Gleaming Clue To The Two Opposites.

Pornography Is The Attempt To Insult Sex, To Do Dirt On It.

And Besides, Look At Elder Flowers And Bluebells-they Are A Sign That Pure Creation Takes Place - Even The Butterfly. But Humanity Never Gets Beyond The Caterpillar Stage -it Rots In The Chrysalis, It Never Will Have Wings.it Is Anti-creation, Like Monkeys And Baboons.

The Near Touch Of Death May Be A Release Into Life; If Only It Will Break The Egoistic Will, And Release That Other Flow.

Be Still When You Have Nothing To Say; When Genuine Passion Moves You, Say What You've Got To Say, And Say It Hot.

You're Spending Your Life Without Renewing It. You've Got To Be Amused, Properly Healthily Amused. You're Spending Your Vitality Without Making Any. Can't Go On You Know. Depression! Avoid Depression!

The Fairest Thing In Nature, A Flower, Still Has Its Roots In Earth And Manure.

The Italians Are Not Passionate: Passion Has Deep Reserves. They Are Easily Moved, And Often Affectionate, But They Rarely Have Any Abiding Passion Of Any Sort.

What Sex Is, We Don't Know, But It Must Be Some Sort Of Fire. For It Always Communicates A Sense Of Warmth, Of Glow. And When This Glow Becomes A Pure Shine, Then We Feel The Sense Of Beauty. We All Have The Fire Of Sex Slumbering Or Burning Inside Us. If We Live To Be Ninety, It Is Still There. Or, If It Dies, We Become One Of Those Ghastly Living Corpses Which Are Unfortunately Becoming More Numerous In The World.

It Is All A Question Of Sensitiveness. Brute Force And Overbearing May Make A Terrific Effect. But In The End, That Which Lives By Delicate Sensitiveness. If It Were A Question Of Brute Force, Not A Single Human Baby Would Survive For A Fortnight. It Is The Grass Of The Field, Most Frail Of All Things, That Supports All Life All The Time. But For The Green Grass, No Empire Would Rise, No Man Would Eat Bread: For Grain Is Grass; And Hercules Or Napoleon Or Henry Ford Would Alike Be Denied Existence.

The Journey Of Love Has Been Rather A Lacerating, If Well-worth-it, Journey.

Go Deeper Than Love, For The Soul Has Greater Depths, Love Is Like The Grass, But The Heart Is Deep Wild Rock Molten, Yet Dense And Permanent.

Unless One Decorates One's House For Oneself Alone, Best Leave It Bare, For Other People Are Walleyed.

Aren't I Enough For You?' She Asked. 'no,' He Said. 'you Are Enough For Me, As Far As A Woman Is Concerned. You Are All Women To Me. But I Wanted A Man Friend, As Eternal As You And I Are Eternal.' (women In Love)

Where The Electron Behaves And Misbehaves As It Will, Where The Forces Tie Themselves Up Into Knots Of Atoms And Come United.

Be Sure Your Sins Will Find You Out, Especially If You're Married And Her Name's Bertha

When Man Has Nothing But His Will To Assert--even His Good-will--it Is Always Bullying. Bolshevism Is One Sort Of Bullying, Capitalism Another: And Liberty Is A Change Of Chains.

The Modern Pantheist Not Only Sees The God In Everything, He Takes Photographs Of It.

The Only True Aristocracy Is That Of Consciousness.

To The Puritan All Things Are Impure, As Somebody Says.

For God’s Sake, Let Us Be Men Not Monkeys Minding Machines Or Sitting With Our Tails Curled While The Machine Amuses Us, The Radio Or Film Or Gramophone. Monkeys With A Bland Grin On Our Faces.

When I Went To The Scientific Doctor I Realised What A Lust There Was In Him To Wreak His So-called Science On Me And Reduce Me To The Level Of A Thing. So I Said: Good-morning! And Left Him.

Protestantism Came And Gave A Great Blow To The Religious And Ritualistic Rhythm Of The Year, In Human Life. Non-conformity Almostfinished The Deed.... Mankind Has Got To Get Back To The Rhythm Of The Cosmos, And The Permanence Of Marriage.

And Still I Look For The Men Who Will Dare To Be Roses Of England Wild Roses Of England Men Who Are Wild Roses Of England With Metal Thorns, Beware! But Still More Brave And Still More Rare The Courage Of Rosiness In A Cabbage World Fragrance Of Roses In A Stale Stink Of Lies Rose-leaves To Bewilder The Clever Fools And Rose-briars To Strangle The Machine.

All Vital Truth Contains The Memory Of All That For Which It Is Not True.

Why Does The Thin Grey Strand Floating Up From The Forgotten Cigarette Between My Fingers, Why Does It Trouble Me?

The Day Of The Absolute Is Over, And We're In For The Strange Gods Once More.

I Cannot Get Any Sense Of An Enemy - Only Of A Disaster.

Those That Go Searching For Love Only Make Manifest Their Own Lovelessness, And The Loveless Never Find Love, Only The Loving Find Love, And They Never Have To Seek For It.

We Make A Mistake Forsaking England And Moving Out Into The Periphery Of Life. After All, Taormina, Ceylon, Africa, America -- As Far As We Go, They Are Only The Negation Of What We Ourselves Stand For And Are: And We're Rather Like Jonahs Running Away From The Place We Belong.

Most Fatal, Most Hateful Of All Things Is Bullying.... Sensual Bullying Of Course Is Fairly Easily Detected. What Is More Dangerous Is Ideal Bullying. Bullying People Into What Is Ideally Good For Them.

The Human Soul Needs Actual Beauty Even More Than Bread.

Literature Is A Toil And A Snare, A Curse That Bites Deep.

To Penetrate Into Italy Is Like A Most Fascinating Act Of Self-discovery-back, Back Down The Old Ways Of Time. Strange And Wonderful Chords Awake In Us, And Vibrate Again After Many Hundreds Of Years Of Complete Forgetfulness.

The Map Appears To Us More Real Than The Land.

One Might Talk About The Sanity Of The Atom The Sanity Of Space The Sanity Of The Electron The Sanity Of Water- For It Is All Alive And Has Something Comparable To That Which We Call Sanity In Ourselves. The Only Oneness Is The Oneness Of Sanity.

Love Is The Hastening Gravitation Of Spirit Towards Spirit, And Body Towards Body, In The Joy Of Creation.

Oh Build Your Ship Of Death. Oh Build It! For You Will Need It. For The Voyage Of Oblivion Awaits You.

If We Sip The Wine, We Find Dreams Coming Upon Us Out Of The Imminent Night

A Man And A Woman Are New To One Another Throughout A Life-time, In The Rhythm Of Marriage That Matches The Rhythm Of The Year. Sex Is The Balance Of Male And Female In The Universe, The Attraction, The Repulsion, The Transit Of Neutrality, The New Attraction, The Repulsion, Always Different, Always New.

We Are Dying, We Are Dying, We Are All Of Us Dying And Nothing Will Stay The Death-flood Rising Within Us And Soon It Will Rise On The World, On The Outside World.

While We Live, Let Us Live.

I Know The Greatness Of Christianity; It Is A Past Greatness.. I Live In 1924, And The Christian Venture Is Done.

Every Civilization When It Loses Its Inner Vision And Its Cleaner Energy, Falls Into A New Sort Of Sordidness, More Vast And More Stupendous Than The Old Savage Sort. An Augean Stable Of Metallic Filth.

America Exhausts The Springs Of One's Soul - I Suppose That's What It Exists For. It Lives To See All Real Spontaneity Expire. But Anyhow It Doesn't Grind On An Old Nerve As Europe Seems To.

One Must Learn To Love, And Go Through A Good Deal Of Suffering To Get To It, Like Any Knight Of The Grail, And The Journey Is Always Towards The Other Soul, Not Away From It. . . . To Love You Have To Learn To Understand The Other, More Than She Understands Herself, And To Submit To Her Understanding Of You. It Is Damnably Difficult And Painful, But It Is The Only Thing Which Endures.

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.

The Only History Is A Mere Question Of One's 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.

Thought Is A Man In His Wholeness, Wholly Attending.

She Had Borne So Long The Cruelty Of Belonging To Him And Not Being Claimed By Him.

Since Obscenity Is The Truth Of Our Passion Today, It Is The Only Stuff Of Art -- Or Almost The Only Stuff.

I Believe That The Highest Virtue Is To Be Happy, Living In The Greatest Truth, Not Submitting To The Falsehood Of These Personaltimes.

In My Very Own Self, I Am Part Of My Family.

The Search For Happiness ... Always Ends In The Ghastly Sense Of The Bottomless Nothingness Into Which You Will Inevitably Fall If You Strain Any Further.

We Can Understand That The Fathers Of The Church In The East Wanted Apocalypse Left Out Of The New Testament. But Like Judas Among The Disciples, It Was Inevitable That It Should Be Included. The Apocalypse Is The Feet Of Clay To The Grand Christian Image. And Down Crashes The Image, On The Weakness Of These Very Feet. There Is Jesus--but There Is Also John The Divine. There Is Christian Love--and There Is Christian Envy. The Former Would "save" The World--the Latter Will Never Be Satisfied Till It Has Destroyed The World. They Are Two Sides Of The Same Medal.

If You Don't Like It, Alter It, And If You Can't Alter It, Put Up With It.

You Love Me So Much, You Want To Put Me In Your Pocket. And I Should Die There Smothered.

Oh The Innocent Girl In Her Maiden Teens Knows Perfectly Well What Everything Means.

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Robertson Davies

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