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The World Fears A New Experience More Than It Fears Anything. Because A New Experience Displaces So Many Old Experiences. . . . The World Doesn't Fear A New Idea. It Can Pigeon-hole Any Idea. But It Can't Pigeon-hole A Real New Experience.

-D. H. Lawrence

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The World Fears A

D. H. Lawrence

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The World Fears A New Experience More Than It Fears Anything. Because A New Experience Displaces So Many Old Experiences. . . . The World Doesn't Fear A New Idea. It Can Pigeon-hole Any Idea. But It Can't Pigeon-hole A Real New Experience.

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New Experiences

More From D. H. Lawrence

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.

If A Woman's Got Nothing But Her Fair Fame To Feed On, Why, It's Thin Tack, And A Donkey Would Die Of It!

Beauty Is A Mystery. You Can Neither Eat It Nor Make Flannel Out Of It.

Truth Does Not Lie Beyond Humanity, But Is One Of The Products Of The Human Mind And Feeling.

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.

Oh Literature, Oh The Glorious Art, How It Preys Upon The Marrow In Our Bones. It Scoops The Stuffing Out Of Us, And Chucks Us Aside. Alas!

Not That The Red Indian Will Ever Possess The Broad Lands Of America. At Least I Presume Not. But His Ghost Will.

Native American

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.

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

She Herself Had Never Been Able To Be Altogether Herself: It Had Been Denied Her.

The World Fears A New Experience More Than It Fears Anything. Because A New Experience Displaces So Many Old Experiences. . . . The World Doesn't Fear A New Idea. It Can Pigeon-hole Any Idea. But It Can't Pigeon-hole A Real New Experience.

New Experiences

But The Effort, The Effort! And As The Marrow Is Eaten Out Of A Man's Bones And The Soul Out Of His Belly, Contending With The Strange Rapacity Of Savage Life, The Lower Stage Of Creation, He Cannot Make The Effort Any More.

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

Marriage And Deathless Friendship, Both Should Be Inviolable And Sacred: Two Great Creative Passions, Separate, Apart, But Complementary: The One Pivotal, The Other Adventurous: The One, Marriage, The Centre Of Human Life; And The Other, The Leap Ahead.

Now The Only Decent Way To Get Something Done Is To Get It Done By Somebody Who Quite Likes Doing It.

I Am Only Half There When I Am Ill, And So There Is Only Half A Man To Suffer. To Suffer In One's Whole Self Is So Great A Violation, That It Is Not To Be Endured.

You Must Always Be A-waggle With Love.

And Yet - And Yet - One's Kite Will Rise On The Wind As Far As Ever One Has String To Let It Go. It Tugs And Tugs And Will Go, And One Is Glad The Further It Goes, Even If Everybody Else Is Nasty About It.

Was His Life Nothing? Had He Nothing To Show, No Work? He Did Not Count His Work, Anyone Could Have Done It. What Had He Known, But The Long, Marital Embrace With His Wife. Curious, That This Was What His Life Amounted To! At Any Rate, It Was Something, It Was Eternal. He Would Say So To Anybody, And Be Proud Of It. He Lay With His Wife In His Arms, And She Was Still His Fulfillment, Just The Same As Ever. And That Was The Be-all And The End-all. Yes, And He Was Proud Of It.

One Realm We Have Never Conquered: The Pure Present.

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.

Morality Which Is Based On Ideas, Or On An Ideal, Is An Unmitigated Evil.

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

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.

So Slowly The Hot Elephant Hearts Grow Full Of Desire, And The Great Beasts Mate In Secret At Last, Hiding Their Fire.

Reach Me A Gentian, Give Me A Torch! Let Me Guide Myself With The Blue, Forked Torch Of This Flower

Don't You Find It A Beautiful Clean Thought, A World Empty Of People, Just Uninterrupted Grass, And A Hare Sitting Up?

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

Art- Speech Is The Only Truth. An Artist Is Usually A Damned Liar But His Art, If It Be Art, Will Tell You The Truth Of His Day And That Is All That Matters. Away With Eternal Truth. The Truth Lives From Day To Day, And The Marvelous Plato Of Yesterday Is Chiefly Bosh Today.

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.

Sometimes Life Takes Hold Of One, Carries The Body Along, Accomplishes One's History, And Yet Is Not Real, But Leaves Oneself As It Were Slurred Over.

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.

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.

Once You Abstract From This, Once You Generalize And Postulate Universals, You Have Departed From The Creative Reality, And Entered The Realm Of Static Fixity, Mechanism, Materialism.

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.

Comes Over One An Absolute Necessity To Move. And What Is More, To Move In Some Particular Direction. A Double Necessity Then: To Get On The Move, And To Know Whither.

The Cosmos Is A Vast Living 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 Nerve Center 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.

The Brangwens Had Lived For Generations On The Marsh Farm, In The Meadows Where The Erewash Twisted Sluggishly Through Alder Trees, Separating Derbyshire From Nottinghamshire.

Why, Oh Why Must One Grow Up, Why Must One Inherit This Heavy, Numbing Responsibility Of Living An Undiscovered Life? Out Of The Nothingness And The Undifferentiated Mass, To Make Something Of Herself! But What? In The Obscurity And Pathlessness To Take A Direction! But Whither? How Take Even One Step? And Yet, How Stand Still? This Was Torment Indeed, To Inherit The Responsibility Of One’s Own Life.

You've Got To Know Yourself So You Can At Last Be Yourself.

Finding Yourself

The Moon! Artemis! The Great Goddess Of The Splendid Past Of Men! Are You Going To Tell Me She Is A Dead Lump?

The True Artist Doesn't Substitute Immorality For Morality. On The Contrary, He Always Substitutes A Finer Morality For A Grosser One.

Away With All Ideals. Let Each Individual Act Spontaneously From The Forever Incalculable Prompting Of The Creative Wellhead Within Him. There Is No Universal Law.

I Want Relations Which Are Not Purely Personal, Based On Purely Personal Qualities; But Relations Based Upon Some Unanimous Accord In Truth Or Belief, And A Harmony Of Purpose, Rather Than Of Personality. I Am Weary Of Personality. Let Us Be Easy And Impersonal, Not Forever Fingering Over Our Own Souls, And The Souls Of Our Acquaintances, But Trying To Create A New Life, A New Common Life, A New Complete Tree Of Life From The Roots That Are Within Us.

The Spanish Wine, My God, It Is Foul, Catpiss Is Champagne Compared, This Is The Sulphurous Urination Of Some Aged Horse.

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

If A Woman Hasn't Got A Tiny Streak Of Harlot In Her, She's A Dry Stick As A Rule.

And Can A Man His Own Quietus Make With A Bare Bodkin?

The Past. The Golden Age Of The Past. What A Nostalgia We All Feel For It. Yet We Don't Want It When We Get It. Try The South Seas.

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.

When Science Starts To Be Interpretive It Is More Unscientific Even Than Mysticism.

Sanity Means The Wholeness Of The Consciousness. And Our Society Is Only Part Conscious, Like An Idiot.

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

Ethical Principles

Every Profound New Movement Makes A Great Swing Also Backwards To Some Older, Half-forgotten Way Of Consciousness.

Love Is Never A Fulfillment. Life Is Never A Thing Of Continuous Bliss. There Is No Paradise. Fight And Laugh And Feel Bitter And Feel Bliss: And Fight Again. Fight, Fight. That Is Life.

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 A Star, Or You Will Just Stay Where You Are.

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.

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 Do All Like To Get Things Inside A Barb-wire Corral. Especially Our Fellow-men. We Love To Round Them Up Inside The Barb-wire Enclosure Of Freedom, And Make 'em Work. Work, You Free Jewel, Work! Shouts The Liberator, Cracking His Whip.

Only This Shimmeriness Is The Real Living. The Shape Is A Dead Crust. The Shimmer Is Inside Really.

It Seems To Me A Purely Lyric Poet Gives Himself, Right Down To His Sex, To His Mood, Utterly And Abandonedly, Whirls Himself Roundtill He Spontaneously Combusts Into Verse. He Has Nothing That Goes On, No Passion, Only A Few Intense Moods, Separate Like Odd Stars, And When Each Has Burned Away, He Must Die.

One Man Isn't Any Better Than Another, Not Because They Are Equal, But Because They Are Intrinsically Other, That There Is No Termof Comparison.

The Great Living Experience For Every Man Is His Adventure Into The Woman. The Man Embraces In The Woman All That Is Not Himself, And From That One Resultant, From That Embrace, Comes Every New Action.

In The End, For Congenial Sympathy, For Poetry, For Work, For Original Feeling And Expression, For Perfect Companionship With One's Friends--give Me The Country.

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

The Profoundest Of All Sensualities Is The Sense Of Truth And The Next Deepest Sensual Experience Is The Sense Of Justice.

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

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.

One Should Be Religious In Everything, Have God, Whatever God Might Be, Present In Everything.

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.

For {she} Had Adopted The Standard Of The Young: What There Was In The Moment Was Everything. And Moments Followed One Another Without Necessarily Belonging To One Another.

Men Are Free When They Belong To A Living, Organic, Believing Community, Active In Fulfilling Some Unfulfilled, Perhaps Unrealized Purpose.

This Is What I Believe: That I Am I. That My Soul Is A Dark Forest. That My Known Self Will Never Be More Than A Little Clearing In The Forest. That Gods, Strange Gods, Come Forth From The Forest Into The Clearing Of My Known Self, And Then Go Back. That I Must Have The Courage To Let Them Come And Go. That I Will Never Let Mankind Put Anything Over Me, But That I Will Try Always To Recognize And Submit To The Gods In Me And The Gods In Other Men And Women. There Is My Creed.

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.

There Is A Brief Time For Sex, And A Long Time When Sex Is Out Of Place. But When It Is Out Of Place As An Activity There Still Should Be The Large And Quiet Space In The Consciousness Where It Lives Quiescent. Old People Can Have A Lovely Quiescent Sort Of Sex, Like Apples, Leaving The Young Quite Free For Their Sort.

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.

A Woman Unsatisfied Must Have Luxuries. But A Woman Who Loves A Man Would Sleep On A Board

I Should Like [people] To Like The Purely Individual Thing In Themselves, Which Makes Them Act In Singleness. And They Only Like To Do The Collective Thing.

One's Action Ought To Come Out Of An Achieved Stillness: Not To Be A Mere Rushing On.

But The Act, Called The Sexual Act, Is Not For The Depositing Of Seed. It Is For Leaping Off Into The Unknown, As From A Cliff's Edge, Like Sappho Into The Sea.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

The Novel Is The One Bright Book Of Life. Books Are Not Life. They Are Only Tremulations On The Ether. But The Novel As A Tremulation Can Make The Whole Man Alive Tremble.

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

Rippling, Rippling, Rippling, Like A Flapping Overlapping Of Soft Flames, Soft As Feathers, Running To Points Of Brilliance, Exquisite, Exquisite And Melting Her All Molten Inside.

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

For My Part, I Prefer My Heart To Be Broken. It Is So Lovely, Dawn-kaleidoscopic Within The Crack.

In America The Chief Accusation Seems To Be One Of "eroticism." This Is Odd, Rather Puzzling To My Mind. Which Eros? Eros Of The Jaunty "amours," Or Eros Of The Sacred Mysteries? And If The Latter, Why Accuse, Why Not Respect, Even Venerate?

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.

Be A Good Animal, True To Your Animal Instincts.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Where Is The Source Of All Money-sickness, And The Origin Of All Sex-perversion?.... It Lies In The Heart Of Man, And Not In The Conditions.

I Don't Like Your Miserable Lonely Single Front Name. It Is So Limited, So Meager; It Has No Versatility; It Is Weighted Down With The Sense Of Responsibility; It Is Worn Threadbare With Much Use; It Is As Bad As Having Only One Jacket And One Hat; It Is Like Having Only One Relation, One Blood Relation, In The World. Never Set A Child Afloat On The Flat Sea Of Life With Only One Sail To Catch The Wind.

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.

You Don't Want To Love - Your Eternal And Abnormal Craving Is To Be Loved. You Aren't Positive, You're Negative. You Absorb, Absorb, As If You Must Fill Yourself Up With Love, Because You've Got A Shortage Somewhere.

The Pyramids Of Egypt Will Not Last A Moment Compared To The Daisy.

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.

Poe Tried Alcohol, And Any Drug He Could Lay His Hands On. He Also Tried Any Human Being He Could Lay His Hands On.

A Woman Has To Live Her Life, Or Live To Repent Not Having Lived It.

The Spirit Of Place [does Not] Exert Its Full Influence Upon A Newcomer Until The Old Inhabitant Is Dead Or Absorbed. So America.... The Moment The Last Nuclei Of Red [indian] Life Break Up In America, Then The White Men Will Have To Reckon With The Full Force Of The Demon Of The Continent.

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.

I Want The Wonder Back Again, Or I Shall Die.

One Sheds One's Sicknesses In Books - Repeats And Presents Again One's Emotions, To Be Master Of Them.

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.

The Whole Question Of Pornography Seems To Me A Question Of Secrecy. Without Secrecy There Would Be No Pornography. But Secrecy And Modesty Are Two Utterly Different Things. Secrecy Has Always An Element Of Fear In It, Amounting Very Often To Hate. Modesty Is Gentle And Reserved. Today, Modesty Is Thrown To The Winds, Even In The Presence Of The Grey Guardians. But Secrecy Is Hugged, Being A Vice In Itself. And The Attitude Of The Grey Ones Is: Dear Young Ladies, You May Abandon All Modesty, So Long As You Hug Your Dirty Little Secret.

Happiness Was A Term Of Hypocrisy Used To Bluff Other People.

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

The Living Moment Is Everything.

Sleep Is A Hint Of Lovely Oblivion.

We Have Lost The Art Of Living, And In The Most Important Science Of All, The Science Of Daily Life, The Science Of Behavior, We Are Complete Ignoramuses. We Have Psychology Instead.

The Source Of All Life And Knowledge Is In #‎ Man And #‎ Woman , And The Source Of All Living Is In The Interchange And The Meeting And Mingling Of These Two: Man-life And Woman-life, Man-knowledge And Woman-knowledge , Man-being And Woman-being.

Is Our Day Of Creative Life Finished? Does There Remain To Us Only The Strange, Awful Afterwards Of The Knowledge In Dissolution,the African Knowledge, But Different For Us, Who Are Blond And Blue-eyed From The North?.... There Was Another Way, The Way Of Freedom. There Was The Paradisal Entry Into Pure, Single Beingwhich Accepted The Obligation Of The Permanent Connection With Others, And With The Other, Submits To The Yoke And Leash Of Love, But Never Forfeits Its Own Proud Individual Singleness, Even While It Loves And Yields.

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

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.

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?

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

Pure Morality Is Only An Instinctive Adjustment Which The Soul Makes.

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

One Should Feel Inside Oneself For Right And Wrong, And Should Have The Patience To Gradually Realise One's God.

If We Had Reverence For Our Life, Our Life Would Take At Once Religious Form. But As It Is, In Our Filthy Irreverence, It Remains A Disgusting Slough, Where Each One Of Us Goes So Thoroughly Disguised In Dirt That We Are All Alike And Indistinguishab

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.

... He Preferred His Own Madness, To The Regular Sanity. He Rejoiced In His Own Madness, He Was Free. He Did Not Want That Old Sanity Of The World, Which Was Become So Repulsive. He Rejoiced In The New-found World Of His Madness. It Was So Fresh And Delicate And So Satisfying.

While We Live, Let Us Live.

For God's Sake, All Of You, Say Spiteful Things About Me, Then I Shall Know I Mean Something To You. Don't Say Surgaries, Or I'm Done.

Don't Be On The Side Of The Angels, It's Too Lowering.

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.

Good God, What Does It Matter? If Life Is A Tragedy, Or A Farce, Or A Disaster, Or Anything Else, What Do I Care! Let Life Be What It Likes. Give Me A Drink, That's What I Want Just Now.

Perhaps Only People Who Are Capable Of Real Togetherness Have That Look Of Being Alone In The Universe. The Others Have A Certain Stickiness, They Stick To The Mass.

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

No Form Of Love Is Wrong, So Long As It Is Love.

There Is The Unknown And The Unknowable Which Propounds All Creation. This We Cannot Love , We Can Only Accept It As A Term Of Our Own Limitation And Ratification. We Can Only Know That From The Unknown, Profound Desires Enter In Upon Us, And That The Fulfilling Of These Desires Is The Fulfilling Of Creation.

And That Is ... How They Are. So Terribly Physically All Over One Another. They Pour Themselves One Over The Other Like So Much Melted Butter Over Parsnips. They Catch Each Other Under The Chin, With A Tender Caress Of The Hand, And They Smile With Sunny Melting Tenderness Into Each Other's Face.

Lies About Love We Are All Liars, Because The Truth Of Yesterday Becomes A Lie Tomorrow, Whereas Letters Are Fixed, And We Live By The Letter Of Truth. The Love I Feel For My Friend, This Year, Is Different From The Love I Felt Last Year. If It Were Not So, It Would Be A Lie. Yet We Reiterate Love! Love! Love! As If It Were A Coin With Fixed Value Instead Of A Flower That Dies, And Opens A Different Bud.

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.

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.

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.

Sex Is The Root Of Which Intuition Is The Foliage And Beauty Is The Flower.

The Only True Aristocracy Is That Of Consciousness.

I Will Wait And Watch Till The Day Of David At Last Shall Be Finished, And Wisdom No More Fox-faced, And The Blood Gets Back Its Flame.

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.

Towns Oftener Swamp One Than Carry One Out Onto The Big Ocean Of Life.

There's Nothing Wrong With Sexual Feelings In Themselves, So Long As They Are Straightforward And Not Sneaking Or Sly. The Right Sort Of Sex Stimulus Is Invaluable To Human Daily Life. Without It The World Grows Grey.

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

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

One Never Can Know The Whys And The Wherefores Of One's Passional Changes.

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.

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

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

There Are Three Cures For Ennui: Sleep, Drink And Travel.

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

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

I Think New Mexico Was The Greatest Experience From The Outside World That I Have Ever Had.

The Trains Roared By Like Projectiles Level On The Darkness, Fuming And Burning, Making The Valley Clang With Their Passage. They Were Gone, And The Lights Of The Towns And Villages Glittered In Silence.

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.

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?

What Is The Knocking? What Is The Knocking At The Door In The Night? It Is Somebody Who Wants To Do Us Harm. No, No, It Is The Three Strange Angels. Admit Them, Admit Them.

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.

If You Cut A Thing Up, Of Course It Will Smell. Hence, Nothing Raises Such An Infernal Stink At Last, As Human Psychology.

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.

No Creature Is Fully Itself Till It Is, Like The Dandelion, Opened In The Bloom Of Pure Relationship To The Sun, The Entire Living Cosmos.

Whether I Get On In The World Is A Question; But I Certainly Don't Get On Very Well With The World.

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.

Now It Is Autumn And The Falling Fruit And The Long Journey Towards Oblivion. The Apples Falling Like Great Drops Of Dew To Bruise Themselves An Exit From Themselves.

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.

That's Just What A Woman Is. She Thinks She Knows What's Good For A Man, And She's Going To See He Gets It; And No Matter If He's Starving, He May Sit And Whistle For What He Needs, While She's Got Him, And Is Giving Him What's Good For Him.

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

There Is Nothing To Save, Now All Is Lost, But A Tiny Core Of Stillness In The Heart Like The Eye Of A Violet.

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

Are You Willing To Be Sponged Out, Erased, Cancelled, Made Nothing? Are You Willing To Be Made Nothing? Dipped Into Oblivion? If Not, You Will Never Really Change.

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.

The Grim Frost Is At Hand, When Apples Will Fall Thick, Almost Thunderous, On The Hardened Earth.

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.

My Wife Has A Beastly Habit Of Comparing Poetry -- All Literature In Fact -- To The Droppings Of The Goats Among The Rocks -- Mere Excreta That Fertilises The Ground It Falls On.

Literary Criticism Can Be No More Than A Reasoned Account Of The Feeling Produced Upon The Critic By The Book He Is Criticising.

At A Wavering Instant The Swallows Gave Way To Bats By The Ponte Vecchio . . . Changing Guard.

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

Mankind Has Got To Get Back To The Rhythm Of The Cosmos.

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

I Shall Always Be A Priest Of Love.

Money Poisons You When You've Got It, And Starves You When You Haven't.

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

God How I Hate New Countries: They Are Older Than The Old, More Sophisticated, Much More Conceited, Only Young In A Certain Puerile Vanity More Like Senility Than Anything.

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

For Us To Go To Italy And To Penetrate Into Italy Is Like A Most Fascinating Act Of Self-discovery

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

The Proper Study Of Mankind Is Man In His Relation To His Deity.

Creatures That Hang Themselves Up Like An Old Rag, To Sleep; And Disgustingly Upside Down. Hanging Upside Down Like Rows Of Disgusting Old Rags And Grinning In Their Sleep. Bats!

I Have A Very Great Fear Of Love. It Is So Personal. Let Each Bird Fly With Its Own Wings, And Each Fish Swim Its Own Course.--morning Brings More Than Love. And I Want To Be True To The Morning.

Softly, In The Dusk, A Woman Is Singing To Me; Taking Me Back Down The Vista Of Years, Till I See A Child Sitting Under The Piano, In The Boom Of The Tingling Strings And Pressing The Small, Poised Feet Of A Mother Who Smiles As She Sings.

She Let Him Come Further, His Lips Came And Surging, Surging, Soft, Oh Soft, Yet On, Like The Powerful Surge Of Water, Irresistible, Till With A Little Blind Cry, She Broke Away.

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

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