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The Artist Usually Sets Out -- Or Used To -- To Point A Moral And Adorn A Tale. The Tale, However, Points The Other Way, As A Rule. Two Blankly Opposing Morals, The Artist's And The Tale's. Never Trust The Artist. Trust The Tale. The Proper Functions Of A Critic Is To Save The Tale From The Artist Who Created It.

-D. H. Lawrence

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The Artist Usually Sets

D. H. Lawrence

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The Artist Usually Sets Out -- Or Used To -- To Point A Moral And Adorn A Tale. The Tale, However, Points The Other Way, As A Rule. Two Blankly Opposing Morals, The Artist's And The Tale's. Never Trust The Artist. Trust The Tale. The Proper Functions Of A Critic Is To Save The Tale From The Artist Who Created It.

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If Only I Am Keen And Hard Like The Sheer Tip Of A Wedge Driven By Invisible Blows, The Rock Will Split, We Shall Come At The Wonder, We Shall Find The Hesperides.

When One Jumps Over The Edge, One Is Bound To Land Somewhere.

It's No Good Trying To Get Rid Of Your Own Aloneness. You've Got To Stick To It All Your Life. Only At Times, At Times, The Gap Will Be Filled In. At Times! But You Have To Wait For The Times. Accept Your Own Aloneness And Stick To It, All Your Life. And Then Accept The Times When The Gap Is Filled In, When They Come. But They've Got To Come. You Can't Force Them.

Naught Is Possessed, Neither Gold, Nor Land Nor Love, Nor Life, Nor Peace, Nor Even Sorrow Nor Death, Nor Yet Salvation. Say Of Nothing: It Is Mine. Say Only: It Is With Me.

To Every Man Who Struggles With His Own Soul In Mystery, A Book That Is A Book Flowers Once, And Seeds, And Is Gone.

The Nature Of The Infant Is Not Just A New Permutation-and-combination Of Elements Contained In The Natures Of The Parents. There Is In The Nature Of The Infant That Which Is Utterly Unknown In The Natures Of The Parents.

There Was A Warmth Of Fury In His Last Phrases. He Meant She Loved Him More Than He Her. Perhaps He Could Not Love Her. Perhaps She Had Not In Herself That Which He Wanted. It Was The Deepest Motive Of Her Soul, This Self-mistrust. It Was So Deep She Dared Neither Realise Nor Acknowledge. Perhaps She Was Deficient. Like An Infinitely Subtle Shame, It Kept Her Always Back. If It Were So, She Would Do Without Him. She Would Never Let Herself Want Him. She Would Merely See.

Obscenity Only Comes In When The Mind Despises And Fears The Body, And The Body Hates And Resists The Mind.

The Dead Don't Die. They Look On And Help.

The #‎ Cosmos Is A Vast Living Body, Of Which We Are Still Parts.

The Tiny Fish Enjoy Themselves In The Sea.

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.

The Novel Is A Perfect Medium For Revealing To Us The Changing Rainbow Of Our Living Relationships. The Novel Can Help Us To Live,as Nothing Else Can: No Didactic Scripture, Anyhow. If The Novelist Keeps His Thumb Out Of The Pan.

The Living Moment Is Everything.

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?

They Lived Freely Among The Students, They Argued With The Men Over Philosophical, Sociological And Artistic Matters, They Were Just As Good As The Men Themselves: Only Better, Since They Were Women.

That Is Almost The Whole Of Russian Literature: The Phenomenal Coruscations Of The Souls Of Quite Commonplace People.

The Great Pagan World Of Which Egypt And Greece Were The Last Living Termsonce Had A Vast And Perhaps Perfect Science Of Itsown, A Science In Terms Of Life. In Our Era This Science Crumbled Into Magic And Charlatanry. But Even Wisdom Crumbles.

[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.

No Form Of Love Is Wrong, So Long As It Is Love, And You Yourself Honour What You Are Doing. Love Has An Extraordinary Variety Of Forms! And That Is All There Is In Life, It Seems To Me. But I Grant You, If You Deny The Variety Of Love You Deny Love Altogether. If You Try To Specialize Love Into One Set Of Accepted Feelings, You Wound The Very Soul Of Love. Love Must Be Multi-form, Else It Is Just Tyranny, Just Death

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

Life And Love Are Life And Love, A Bunch Of Violets Is A Bunch Of Violets, And To Drag In The Idea Of A Point Is To Ruin Everything. Live And Let Live, Love And Let Love, Flower And Fade, And Follow The Natural Curve, Which Flows On, Pointless.

There's Lots Of Good Fish In The Sea...maybe...but The Vast Masses Seem To Be Mackerel Or Herring, And If You're Not Mackerel Or Herring Yourself, You Are Likely To Find Very Few Good Fish In The Sea.

I'd Be Ashamed To See A Woman Walking Around With My Name-label On Her, Address And Railway Station, Like A Wardrobe Trunk.

A Man Must Keep His Earnestness Nimble, To Escape Ridicule.

But, Especially In Love, Only Counterfeit Emotions Exist Nowadays. We Have All Been Taught To Mistrust Everybody Emotionally, From Parents Downwards, Or Upwards. Don’t Trust Anybody With Your Real Emotions: If You’ve Got Any: That Is The Slogan Of Today. Trust Them With Your Money, Even, But Never With Your Feelings. They Are Bound To Trample On Them.

Paris Was Sad. One Of The Saddest Towns: Weary Of Its Now-mechanical Sensuality, Weary Of The Tension Of Money, Money, Money, Weary Even Of Resentment And Conceit, Just Weary To Death, And Still Not Sufficiently Americanized Or Londonized To Hide The Weariness Under A Mechanical Jig-jig-jig!

America Does To Me What I Knew It Would Do: It Just Bumps Me. The People Charge At You Like Trucks Coming Down On You -- No Awareness. But One Tries To Dodge Aside In Time. Bump! Bump! Go The Trucks. And That Is Human Contact.

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. Go Down To Your Deep Old Heart, And Lose Sight Of Yourself. And Lose Sight Of Me, The Me Whom You Turbulently Loved. Let Us Lose Sight Of Ourselves, And Break The Mirrors. For The Fierce Curve Of Our Lives Is Moving Again To The Depths Out Of Sight, In The Deep Living Heart.

I Am Not A Mechanism, An Assembly Of Various Sections. And It Is Not Because The Mechanism Is Working Wrongly, That I Am Ill. I Am Ill Because Of Wounds To The Soul, To The Deep Emotional Self, And The Wounds To The Soul Take A Long, Long Time, Only Time Can Help And Patience, And A Certain Difficult Repentance Long Difficult Repentance, Realization Of Life’s Mistake, And The Freeing Oneself From The Endless Repetition Of The Mistake Which Mankind At Large Has Chosen To Sanctify.

You Live By What You Thrill To, And There's The End Of It.

We Ought To Dance With Rapture That We Should Be Alive And In The Flesh, And Part Of The Living, Incarnate Cosmos.

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

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.

The True Self Is Not Aware That It Is A Self. A Bird, As It Sings, Sings Itself. But Not According To A Picture. It Has No Idea Of Itself.

Not I, Not I, But The Wind That Blows Through Me! A Fine Wind Is Blowing The New Direction Of Time.

Never Trust The Teller, Trust The Tale.

One Could Laugh At The World Better If It Didn't Mix Tender Kindliness With Its Brutality.

The Picture Must All Come Out Of The Artist's Inside, Awareness Of Forms And Figures... It Is More Than Memory. It Is The Image As It Lives In The Consciousness, Alive Like A Vision, But Unknown.

The Reaction To Any Word May Be, In An Individual, Either A Mob-reaction Or An Individual Reaction. It Is Up To The Individual To Ask Himself: Is My Reaction Individual, Or Am I Merely Reacting From My Mob-self? When It Comes To The So-called Obscene Words, I Should Say That Hardly One Person In A Million Escapes Mob-reaction.

That Is Your Trick, Your Bit Of Filthy Magic: Invisibility, And The Anaesthetic Power To Deaden My Attention In Your Direction.

The Great Mass Of Humanity Should Never Learn To Read Or Write.

I Like Australia Less And Less. The Hateful Newness, The Democratic Conceit, Every Man A Little Pope Of Perfection.

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

The Aztec Gods And Goddesses Are, As Far As We Have Known Anything About Them, An Unlovely And Unlovable Lot. In Their Myths There Is No Grace Or Charm, No Poetry. Only This Perpetual Grudge, Grudge, Grudging, One God Grudging Another, The Gods Grudging Men Their Existence, And Men Grudging The Animals. The Goddess Of Love Is Goddess Of Dirt And Prostitution, A Dirt-eater, A Horror, Without A Touch Of Tenderness.

Censors Are Dead Men Set Up To Judge Between Life And Death. For No Live, Sunny Man Would Be A Censor, He'd Just Laugh.

Mr Hemingway Does It Extremely Well. Nothing Matters. Everything Happens. One Wants To Keep Oneself Loose. Avoid One Thing Only: Gettng Connected Up. Don't Get Connected Up. If You Get Held By Anything, Break It. Don't Be Held. Break It, And Get Away. Don't Get Away With The Idea Of Getting Somewhere Else. Just Get Away, For The Sake Of Getting Away. Beat It! "well, Boy, I Guess I'll Beat It." Ah, The Pleasure In Saying That

My Whole Working Philosophy Is That The Only Stable Happiness For Mankind Is That It Shall Live Married In Blessed Union To Woman-kind - Intimacy, Physical And Psychical Between A Man And His Wife. I Wish To Add That My State Of Bliss Is By No Means Perfect.

Sentimentalism Is The Working Off On Yourself Of Feelings You Haven't Really Got.

The English People On The Whole Are Surely The Nicest People In The World, And Everybody Makes Everything So Easy For Everyone Else, That There Is Almost Nothing To Resist At All.

The Words Themselves Are Clean, So Are The Things To Which They Apply. But The Mind Drags In A Filthy Association, Calls Up Some Repulsive Emotion. Well, Then, Cleanse The Mind, That Is The Real Job. It Is The Mind Which Is The Augean Stables, Not Language.

When The Emotional Soul Receives A Wounding Shock, The Soul Seems To Recover As The Body Recovers. But This Is Only In Appearance. Slowly, Slowly The Wound To The Soul Begins To Make Itself Felt, Like A Bruise, Which Only Slowly Deepens Its Terrible Ache, Till It Fills All The Psyche. And When We Think We Have Recovered And Forgotten, It Is Then That The Terrible After-effects Have To Be Encountered At Their Worst.

Beware Of Absolutes. There Are Many Gods.

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!

Every New Stroke Of Civilization Has Cost The Lives Of Countless Brave Men, Who Have Fallen Defeated By The Dragon, In Their Efforts To Win The Apples Of The Hesperides, Or The Fleece Of Gold. Fallen In Their Efforts To Overcome The Old, Half Sordid Savagery Of The Lower Stages Of Creation, And Win The Next Stage.

Most Men Have A Deadness In Them That Frightens Me So Because Of My Own Deadness. Why Can't Men Get Their Life Straight, Like St.mawr, And Then Think? Why Can't They Think Quick, Mother: Quick As A Woman: Only Farther Than We Do?

When I Read Shakespeare I Am Struck With Wonder That Such Trivial People Should Muse And Thunder In Such Lovely Language.

Melville Had To Fight, Fight Against The Existing World, Against His Own Very Self. Only He Would Never Quite Put The Knife In The Heart Of His Paradisal Ideal. Somehow, Somewhere, Somewhen, Love Should Be A Fulfillment, And Life Should Be A Thing Of Bliss. That Was His Fixed Ideal. Fata Morgana. That Was The Pin He Tortured Himself On, Like A Pinned-down Butterfly.

The Whole Life-effort Of Man Is To Get His Life Into Direct Contact With The Elemental Life Of The Cosmos, Mountain Life, Cloud Life, Thunder Life, Air Life, Earth Life, Sun Life. To Come Into Immediate Felt Contact, And So Derive Energy, Power And A Dark Sort Of Joy. This Effort Into Sheer Naked Contact, Without An Intermediary Or Mediator Is The Root Meaning Of Religion.

Death Is The Only Pure, Beautiful Conclusion Of A Great Passion.

Men Are Free When They Are Obeying Some Deep, Inward Voice Of Religious Belief. Obeying From Within. Men Are Free When They Belong To A Living, Organic, Believing Community, Active In Fulfilling Some Unfulfilled, Perhaps Unrealized Purpose. Not When They Are Escaping To Some Wild West. The Most Unfree Souls Go West, And Shout Of Freedom.

In America The Cohesion Was A Matter Of Choice And Will. But In Europe It Was Organic.

How Beautiful Maleness Is, If It Finds Its Right Expression.

That's It! When You Come To Know Men, That's How They Are: Too Sensitive In The Wrong Place.

And Every True Artist Is The Salvation Of Every Other. But Only Artists Produce For Each Other The World That Is Fit To Live In.

Ah, Then, Upon My Bedroom I Do Draw The Blind To Hide The Garden, Where The Moon Enjoys The Open Blossoms As They Straw Their Beauty For His Taking, Boon For Boon. And I Do Lift My Aching Arms To You, And I Do Lift My Anguished, Avid Breast, And I Do Weep For Very Pain Of You, And Fling Myself At The Doors Of Sleep, For Rest.

Human Love, Human Trust, Are Always Perilous, Because They Break Down. The Greater The Love, The Greater The Trust, And The Greater The Peril, The Greater The Disaster. Because To Place Absolute Trust On Another Human Being Is In Itself A Disaster, Both Ways, Since Each Human Being Is A Ship That Must Sail Its Own Course, Even If It Go In Company With Another Ship.... And Yet, Love Is The Greatest Thing Between Human Beings.

It Always Seemed To Me That Men Wore Their Beards, Like They Wear Their Neckties, For Show.

Whatever Life May Be, And Whatever Horror Men Have Made Of It, The World Is A Lovely Place, A Magic Place, Something To Marvel Over. The World Is An Amazing Place.

One Doesn't Know, Till One Is A Bit At Odds With The World, How Much One's Friends Who Believe In One Rather Generously, Mean To One.

The Nice Clean Intimacy Which We Now So Admire Between The Sexes Is Sterilizing. It Makes Neuters. Later On, No Deep, Magical Sex-life Is Possible.

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

You Can't Insure Against The Future, Except By Really Believing In The Best Bit Of You, And In The Power Beyond It.

For Even Satire Is A Form Of Sympathy. It Is The Way Our Sympathy Flows And Recoils That Really Determines Our Lives. And Here Lies The Vast Importance Of The Novel, Properly Handled. It Can Inform And Lead Into New Places Our Sympathy Away In Recoil From Things Gone Dead. Therefore The Novel, Properly Handled, Can Reveal The Most Secret Places Of Life: For It Is The Passional Secret Places Of Life, Above All, That The Tide Of Sensitive Awareness Needs To Ebb And Flow, Cleansing And Freshening.

Tragedy Ought Really To Be A Great Kick At Misery.

The Glamour Of Childish Days Is Upon Me, My Manhood Is Cast Down In The Flood Of Remembrance.

The Soul Is A Very Perfect Judge Of Her Own Motions, If Your Mind Doesn't Dictate To Her.

While The White Man Keeps The Impetus Of His Own Proud, Onward March, The Dark Races Will Yield And Serve, Perforce. But Let The White Man Once Have A Misgiving About His Own Leadership, And The Dark Races Will At Once Attack Him, To Pull Him Down Into The Old Gulfs.

At The Back Of My Life's Horizon, Where The Dreamings Of Past Lives Crowd.

Plant Consciousness, Insect Consciousness, Fish Consciousness, All Are Related By One Permanent Element, Which We May Call The Religious Element Inherent In All Life, Even In A Flea: The Sense Of Wonder. That Is Our Sixth Sense, And It Is The Natural Religious Sense.

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.

All That We Know Is Nothing, We Are Merely Crammed Wastepaper Baskets, Unless We Are In Touch With That Which Laughs At All Our Knowing.

The East Is Marvellously Interesting For Tracing Our Steps Back. But For Going Forward, It Is Nothing. All It Can Hope For Is To Be Fertilised By Europe, So That It Can Start On A New Phase.

As We All Know, Too Much Of Any Divine Thing Is Destruction

California Is A Queer Place In A Way, It Has Turned Its Back On The World, And Looks Into The Void Pacific. It Is Absolutely Selfish, Very Empty, But Not False, And At Least, Not Full Of False Effort.

Primarily I Am A Passionately Religious Man, And My Novels Must Be Written From The Depth Of My Religious Experience.

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

Whatever A Human Being Makes And Makes Live, It Lives Because Of The Life He Puts Into It.

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

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.

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.

Yea, Paris Is A Festive Ton -- A Festive Ton For All! Skate O'er On Joy -- Thin Crust Of Gilded, Polished Joy! What Matters It If Hell's Beneath?

I Hate The Actor And Audience Business. An Author Should Be In Among The Crowd, Kicking Their Shins Or Cheering Them On To Some Mischief Or Merriment.

The Difference Between People Isn't In Their Class, But In Themselves. Only From The Middle Classes One Gets Ideas, And From The Common People--life Itself, Warmth. You Feel Their Hates And Loves.

In Every Great Novel, Who Is The Hero All The Time? Not Any Of The Characters, But Some Unnamed And Nameless Flame Behind Them All.

Whales In Mid-ocean, Suspended In The Waves Of The Sea Great Heaven Of Whales In The Waters, Old Hierarchies. And Enormous Mother Whales Lie Dreaming Suckling Their Whale-tender Young And Dreaming With Strange Whale Eyes Wide Open In The Waters Of The Beginning And The End.

I Got The Blues Thinking Of The Future, So I Left Off And Made Some Marmalade. It's Amazing How It Cheers One Up To Shred Orange And Scrub The Floor.

Sex Is Really Only Touch, The Closest Of All Touch. And It's Touch We're Afraid Of.

All This Americanising And Mechanising Has Been For The Purpose Of Overthrowing The Past. And Now Look At America, Tangled In Her Own Barbed Wire, And Mastered By Her Own Machines.

It Is Not Woman Who Claims The Highest In Man. It Is A Man's Own Religious Soul That Drives Him On Beyond Women, To His Supreme Activity. For His Highest, Man Is Responsible To God Alone.

I Would Rather Sit Still In A State Of Peace On A Stone Than Ride In The Motor-car Of A Multi-millionaire And Feel The Peacelessness Of The Multi-millionaire Poisoning Me.

If It Doesn't Absorb You, If It Isn't Any Fun, Don't Do It.

One Can No Longer Live With People: It Is Too Hideous And Nauseating. Owners And Owned, They Are Like The Two Sides Of A Ghastly Disease.

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

It Is Only When Men Lose Their Contact With This Eternal Life-flame, And Become Merely Personal, Things In Themselves, Instead Ofthings Kindled In The Flame, That The Fight Between Man And Woman Begins.

And In This Passion For Understanding Her Soul Lay Close To His; She Had Him All To Herself. But He Must Be Made Abstract First.

They Say Geniuses Mostly Have Great Mothers. They Mostly Have Sad Fates.

An Artist Is Only An Ordinary Man With A Greater Potentiality--same Stuff, Same Make Up, Only More Force. And The Strong Driving Force Usually Finds His Weak Spot, And He Goes Cranked, Or Goes Under.

My Great Religion Is A Belief In The Blood, The Flesh, As Being Wiser Than The Intellect. We Can Go Wrong In Our Minds. But What Our Blood Feels And Believes And Says, Is Always True. The Intellect Is Only A Bit And A Bridle.

That Which One Cannot Experience In Daily Life Is Not True For Oneself.

Money Is The Seal And Stamp Of Success.

[u]nless A Woman Is Held, By Man, Safe Within The Bounds Of Belief, She Becomes Inevitably A Destructive Force.

A Man Was Like A Child With His Appetites. A Woman Had To Yield Him What He Wanted, Or Like A Child He Would Probably Turn Nasty And Flounce Away And Spoil What Was A Very Pleasant Connection.

It's Better To Be Born Lucky Than Rich. If You're Rich, You May Lose Your Money, But If You're Born Lucky, You Will Always Have More Money.

She Knew That The Horse, Born To Serve Nobly, Had Waited In Vain For Someone Noble To Serve. His Spirit Knew That Nobility Had Gone Out Of Men.

[man's] Life Consists In A Relation With All Things: Stone, Earth, Trees, Flowers, Water, Insects, Fishes, Birds, Creatures, Sun,rainbow, Children, Women, Other Men. But His Greatest And Final Relation Is With The Sun.

Nobody Can Have The Soul Of Me. My Mother Has Had, And Nobody Can Have It Again. Nobody Can Come Into My Very Self Again, And Breathe Me Like An Atmosphere.

Life Is Beautiful, As Long As It Consumes You. When It Is Rushing Through You, Destroying You, Life Is Gorgeous, Glorious. It's When You Burn A Slow Fire And Save Fuel, That Life's Not Worth Having.

There Is An Eternal Vital Correspondence Between Our Blood And The Sun: There Is An Eternal Vital Correspondence Between Our Nerves And The Moon. If We Get Out Of Contact And Harmony With The Sun And Moon, Then Both Turn Into Great Dragons Of Destruction Against Us.

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.

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

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.

Their Whole Life Depends On Spending Money, And Now They’ve Got None To Spend. That’s Our Civilization And Our Education: Bring Up The Masses To Depend Entirely On Spending Money, And Then The Money Gives Out.

Only The Desert Has A Fascination--to Ride Alone--in The Sun In The Forever Unpossessed Country--away From Man. That Is A Great Temptation.

Oh, What A Catastrophe, What A Maiming Of Love When It Was Made Personal, Merely Personal Feeling. This Is What Is The Matter With Us: We Are Bleeding At The Roots Because We Are Cut Off From The Earth And Sun And Stars. Love Has Become A Grinning Mockery Because, Poor Blossom, We Plucked It From Its Stem On The Tree Of Life And Expected It To Keep On Blooming In Our Civilized Vase On The Table.

And What's Romance? Usually, A Nice Little Tale Where You Have Everything As You Like It, Where Rain Never Wets Your Jacket And Gnats Never Bite Your Nose And It's Always Daisy-time.

When Along The Pavement, Palpitating Flames Of Life, People Flicker Around Me, I Forget My Bereavement, The Gap In The Great Constellation, The Place Where A Star Used To Be

In Masturbation There Is Nothing But Loss. There Is No Reciprocity. There Is Merely The Spending Away Of A Certain Force, And No Return. The Body Remains, In A Sense, A Corpse, After The Act Of Self-abuse. There Is No Change, Only Deadening. There Is What We Call Dead Loss. And This Is Not The Case In Any Act Of Sexual Intercourse Between Two People. Two People May Destroy One Another In Sex. But They Cannot Just Produce The Null Effect Of Masturbation.

The Novel Is The Highest Form Of Human Expression So Far Attained. Why? Because It Is So Incapable Of The Absolute.

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

Try To Find Your Deepest Issue In Every Confusion, And Abide By That.

And Whoever Forces Himself To Love Anybody Begets A Murderer In His Own Body.

I'll Do My Life Work, Sticking Up For The Love Between Man And Woman.

After All, The World Is Not A Stage-not To Me: Nor A Theatre: Nor A Show-house Of Any Sort. And Art, Especially Novels, Are Not Little Theatres Where The Reader Sits Aloft And Watches...and Sighs, Commiserates, Condones And Smiles. That's What You Want A Book To Be: Because It Leaves You So Safe And Superior, With Your Two-dollar Ticket To The Show. And That's What My Books Are Not And Never Will Be...whoever Reads Me Will Be In The Thick Of The Scrimmage, And If He Doesn't Like It If He Wants A Safe Seat In The Audience-let Him Read Someone Else.

There Is No Smooth Road Into The Future: But We Go Round, Or Scramble Over The Obstacles.

How To Begin To Educate A Child. First Rule: Leave Him Alone. Second Rule: Leave Him Alone. Third Rule: Leave Him Alone. That Is The Whole Beginning.

How Can Any Man Be Free Without A Soul Of His Own, That He Believes In And Won't Sell At Any Price?

I Am Turned Into A Dream. I Feel Nothing, Or I Don't Know What I Feel. Yet It Seems To Me I Am Happy.

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

Water Is H2o, Hydrogen Two Parts, Oxygen One, But There Is Also A Third Thing, That Makes It Water And Nobody Knows What That Is.

Ours Is An Excessively Conscious Age. We Know So Much, We Feel So Little.

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.

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

That's How Women Are With Me " Said Paul. "they Want Me Like Mad But They Don't Want To Belong To Me.

Anatomy Presupposes A Corpse; Psychology Presupposes A World Of Corpses.

Only In A Novel Are All Things Given Full Play.

When Love Enters, The Whole Spiritual Constitution Of A Man Changes, Is Filled With The Holy Ghost, And Almost His Form Is Altered.

If It Be Not True To Me, What Care I How True It Be.. Though It Be Not True To Thee, It's Gay And Gospel Truth To Me.

She Was Always Waiting, It Seemed To Be Her Forte.

The Tragedy Is When You've Got Sex In The Head Instead Of Down Where It Belongs.

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.

What A Frail, Easily Hurt, Rather Pathetic Thing A Human Body Is, Naked; Somehow A Little Unfinished, Incomplete!

I Don't Believe Any More In Democracy. But I Can't Believe In The Old Sort Of Aristocracy, Either, Nor Can I Wish It Back, Splendid As It Was. What I Believe In Is The Old Homeric Aristocracy, When The Grandeur Was Inside A Man, And He Lived In A Simple Wooden House.

I Like To Write When I Feel Spiteful; It's Like Having A Good Sneeze.

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.

People Always Make War When They Say They Love Peace.

Men Live In Glad Obedience To The Masters They Believe In, Or They Live In A Frictional Opposition To The Master They Wish To Undermine.

When All Comes To All, The Most Precious Element In Life Is Wonder. Love Is A Great Emotion, And Power Is Power. But Both Love And Power Are Based On Wonder.

I Am Part Of The Sun As My Eye Is Part Of Me. That I Am Part Of The Earth My Feet Know Perfectly, And My Blood Is Part Of The Sea. There Is Not Any Part Of Me That Is Alone And Absolute Except My Mind, And We Shall Find That The Mind Has No Existence By Itself, It Is Only The Glitter Of The Sun On The Surfaces Of The Water.

Loud Peace Propaganda Makes War Seem Imminent.

And It Seems To Me A Blasphemy To Say That The Holy Spirit Is Love. In The Old Testament It Is An Eagle: In The New It Is A Dove.christ Insists On The Dove: But In His Supreme Moments He Includes The Eagle.

I Never Knew How Soothing Trees Are-many Trees And Patches Of Open Sunlight, And Tree Presences; It Is Almost Like Having Another Being.

We Are So Conceited And So Unproud.

I Think I Am Much Too Valuable A Creature To Offer Myself To A German Bullet Gratis And For Fun.

The Refined Punishments Of The Spiritual Mode Are Usually Much More Indecent And Dangerous Than A Good Smack.

What We Want Is To Destroy Our False, Inorganic Connections, Especially Those Related To Money, And Re-establish The Living Organic Connections, With The Cosmos, The Sun And Earth, With Mankind And Nation And Family. Start With The Sun, And The Rest Will Slowly, Slowly Happen.

The Christian Fear Of The Pagan Outlook Has Damaged The Whole Consciousness Of Man.

Ethics And Equity And The Principles Of Justice Do Not Change With The Calendar.

Ethical Principles

He Felt He Had Lost It For Good, He Knew What It Was To Have Been In Communication With Her, And To Be Cast Off Again. In Misery, His Heart Like A Heavy Stone, He Went About Unliving.

Art Is A Form Of Supremely Delicate Awareness And Atonement — Meaning Atoneness, The State Of Being At One With The Object.

It's Autumn And Everybody Feels Like A Disembodied Spirit Then.

I Can Give You A Spirit Love, I Have Given You This Long, Long Time; But Not Embodied Passion. See, You Are A Nun. I Have Given You What I Would Give A Holy Nun...in All Our Relations No Body Enters. I Do Not Talk To You Through The Senses - Rather Through The Spirit. That Is Why We Cannot Love In The Common Sense.

You'll Never Succeed In Idealizing Hard Work. Before You Can Dig Mother Earth You've Got To Take Off Your Ideal Jacket. The Harder A Man Works, At Brute Labor, The Thinner Becomes His Idealism, The Darker His Mind.

I Like Relativity And Quantum Theories Because I Don't Understand Them And They Make Me Feel As If Space Shifted About Like A Swan That Can't Settle, Refusing To Sit Still And Be Measured; And As If The Atom Were An Impulsive Thing Always Changing Its Mind.

I Am Convinced That The Majority Of People To-day Have Good, Generous Feelings Which They Can Never Know, Never Experience, Because Of Some Fear, Some Repression. I Do Not Believe That People Would Be Villains, Thieves, Murderers And Sexual Criminals If They Were Freed From Legal Restraint.

Why Were We Driven Out Of Paradise? Why Did We Fall Into This Gnawing Disease Of Unappeasable Dissatisfaction? Not Because We Sinned. Ah, No. All The Animals In Paradise Enjoyed The Sensual Passion Of Coition. Not Because We Sinned. But Because We Got Sex Into Our Head.

So Long As You Don't Feel Life's Paltry And A Miserable Business, The Rest Doesn't Matter, Happiness Or Unhappiness.

Recklessness Is Almost A Man's Revenge On His Woman. He Feels He Is Not Valued So He Will Risk Destroying Himself To Deprive Her Altogether.

The Final Aim Is Not To Know, But To Be.... You've Got To Know Yourself So That You Can At Last Be Yourself. "be Yourself" Is The Last Motto.

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.

Along The Avenue Of Cypresses, All In Their Scarlet Cloaks And Surplices Of Linen, Go The Chanting Choristers, The Priests In Gold And Black, The Villagers. . . .

Marriage Is The Clue To Human Life, But There Is No Marriage Apart From The Wheeling Sun And The Nodding Earth, From The Strayingof The Planets And The Magnificence Of The Fixed Stars.

It Seems To Me That The Chief Thing About A Woman - Who Is Much Of A Woman - Is That In The Long Run She Is Not To Be Had... She Is Not To Be Caught By Any Of The Catch-words, Love, Beauty, Honor, Duty, Worth, Work, Salvation - None Of Them - Not In The Long Run. In The Long Run She Only Says Am I Satisfied, Or Is There Some Beastly Dissatisfaction Gnawing And Gnawing Inside Me. And If There Is Some Dissatisfaction, It Is Physical, At Least As Much As Psychic, Sex As Much As Soul.

She Is My First, Great Love. She Was A Wonderful, Rare Woman - You Do Not Know; As Strong, And Steadfast, And Generous As The Sun. She Could Be As Swift As A White Whiplash, And As Kind And Gentle As Warm Rain, And As Steadfast As The Irreducible Earth Beneath Us.

When I Hear Modern People Complain Of Being Lonely Then I Know What Has Happened. They Have Lost The Cosmos.

For, Of Course, Being A Girl, One’s Whole Dignity And Meaning In Life Consisted In The Achievement Of An Absolute, A Perfect, A Pure And Noble Freedom. What Else Did A Girl’s Life Mean?

Curse The Blasted, Jelly-boned Swines, The Slimy, The Belly-wriggling Invertebrates, The Miserable Soddingrotters, The Flaming Sods, The Sniveling, Dribbling, Dithering, Palsied, Pulse-less Lot That Make Up England Today. They've Got White Of Egg In Their Veins, And Their Spunk Is That Watery It's A Marvel They Can Breed.

The History Of The Cosmos Is The History Of The Struggle Of Becoming. When The Dim Flux Of Unformed Life Struggled, Convulsed Back And Forth Upon Itself, And Broke At Last Into Light And Dark Came Into Existence As Light, Came Into Existence As Cold Shadow Then Every Atom Of The Cosmos Trembled With Delight.

When We Get Out Of The Glass Bottles Of Our Ego, And When We Escape Like Squirrels Turning In The Cages Of Our Personality And Get Into The Forests Again, We Shall Shiver With Cold And Fright But Things Will Happen To Us So That We Don't Know Ourselves. Cool, Unlying Life Will Rush In, And Passion Will Make Our Bodies Taut With Power, We Shall Stamp Our Feet With New Power And Old Things Will Fall Down, We Shall Laugh, And Institutions Will Curl Up Like Burnt Paper.

It Grew Late. Through The Open Door, Stealthily, Came The Scent Of Madonna Lilies, Almost As If It Were Prowling Abroad.

Behold Then Septimus Dodge Returning To Dodge-town Victorious. Not Crowned With Laurel, It Is True, But Wreathed In Lists Of Things He Has Seen And Sucked Dry. Seen And Sucked Dry, You Know: Venus De Milo, The Rhine Or The Coliseum: Swallowed Like So Many Clams, And Left The Shells.

The Whole Point About The True Unconscious Is That It Is All The Time Moving Forward, Beyond The Range Of Its Own Fixed Laws Or Habits. It Is No Good Trying To Superimpose An Ideal Nature Upon The Unconscious.

Sleep Is Still Most Perfect, In Spite Of Hygienists, When It Is Shared With A Beloved. The Warmth, The Security And Peace Of Soul, The Utter Comfort From The Touch Of The Other, Knits The Sleep, So That It Takes The Body And Soul Completely In Its Healing.

God Doesn't Know Things. He Is Things.

I Am Part Of The Sun As My Eye Is Part Of Me. That I Am Part Of The Earth My Feet Know Perfectly, And My Blood Is Part Of The Sea. My Soul Knows That I Am Part Of The Human Race, My Soul Is An Organic Part Of The Great Human Race, As My Spirit Is Part Of My Nation. In My Own Very Self, I Am Part Of My Family.

What One Does In One's Art, That Is The Breath Of One's Being. What One Does In One's Life, That Is A Bagatelle For The Outsiders To Fuss About.

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

How Ravished One Could Be Without Ever Being Touched. Ravished By Dead Words Become Obscene And Dead Ideas Become Obsessions.

A Book Lives As Long As It Is Unfathomed.

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Lyndon B. Johnson

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