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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.
-D. H. Lawrence
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What One Does In

D. H. Lawrence
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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.

Understanding the Quote: "what one does in one's art, that is the breath of one's..."

This quote by D. H. Lawrence reflects deeply on the theme of art. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Art, Doe, Outsiders, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how D. H. Lawrence interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About D. H. Lawrence

D. H. Lawrence is celebrated for insightful thoughts on art and doe. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Art
Doe
Outsiders
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We Have To Hate Our Immediate Predecessors, To Get Free From Their Authority.
Hate
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That Is Your Trick, Your Bit Of Filthy Magic: Invisibility, And The Anaesthetic Power To Deaden My Attention In Your Direction.
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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.
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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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It Is Time That The Protestant Church, The Church Of The Son, Should Be One Again With The Roman Catholic Church, The Church Of The Father. It Is Time That Man Shall Cease, First To Live In The Flesh, With Joy, And Then, Unsatisfied, To Renounce And To Mortify The Flesh.
Father
Son
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Morality In The Novel Is The Trembling Instability Of The Balance. When The Novelist Puts His Thumb In The Scale, To Pull Down The Balance To His Own Predilection, That Is Immorality.
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The Only True Aristocracy Is That Of Consciousness.
Poetry
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Men Are Freest When They Are Most Unconscious Of Freedom. The Shout Is A Rattling Of Chains, Always Was.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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May
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There Is A Sixth Sense, The Natural Religious Sense, The Sense Of Wonder.
Religious
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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.
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In Every Living Thing There Is The Desire For Love.
Love
Romance
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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.
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Reach Me A Gentian, Give Me A Torch! Let Me Guide Myself With The Blue, Forked Torch Of This Flower
Flower
Blue
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Literary Criticism Can Be No More Than A Reasoned Account Of The Feeling Produced Upon The Critic By The Book He Is Criticising.
Book
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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!
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Reach Me A Gentian, Give Me A Torch! Let Me Guide Myself With The Blue, Forked Torch Of A Flower Down The Darker And Darker Stairs, Where Blue Is Darkened On Blueness Even Where Persephone Goes, Just Now, From The Frosted September To The Sightless Realm Where Darkness Is Awake Upon The Dark.
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Dark
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Be A Good Animal, True To Your Animal Instincts.
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Shall I Tell You What You Have That Other Men Don't?.... It's The Courage Of Your Own Tenderness.
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Don't Be Sucked In By The Su-superior, Don't Swallow The Culture Bait, Don't Drink, Don't Drink And Get Beerier And Beerier, Do Learn To Discriminate.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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It Is Quite True, As Some Poets Said, That The God Who Created Man Must Have Had A Sinister Sense Of Humor, Creating Him A Reasonable Being, Yet Forcing Him To Take This Ridiculous Posture, And Driving Him With Blind Craving For This Ridiculous Performance.
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Truth Does Not Lie Beyond Humanity, But Is One Of The Products Of The Human Mind And Feeling.
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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.
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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.
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All Vital Truth Contains The Memory Of All That For Which It Is Not True.
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A Book Lives As Long As It Is Unfathomed.
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Sex And A Cocktail: They Both Lasted About As Long, Had The Same Effect, And Amounted To About The Same Thing.
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Previously, Even In Egypt, Men Had Not Learned To See Straight. They Fumbled In The Dark, And Didn't Quite Know Where They Were, Or What They Were. Like Men In A Dark Room, They Only Felt Their Existence Surging In The Darkness Of Other Creatures. We, However, Have Learned To See Ourselves For What We Are, As The Sun Sees Us. The Kodak Bears Witness.
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They Say The Sea Is Cold, But The Sea Contains The Hottest Blood Of All, And The Wildest, The Most Urgent.
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I Want The Wonder Back Again, Or I Shall Die.
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Towns Oftener Swamp One Than Carry One Out Onto The Big Ocean Of Life.
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When Passion Is Dead, Or Absent, Then The Magnificent Throb Of Beauty Is Incomprehensible And Even A Little Despicable.
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The Old Ideals Are Dead As Nails--nothing There. It Seems To Me There Remains Only This Perfect Union With A Woman--sort Of Ultimate Marriage--and There Isn't Anything Else.
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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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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.
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And Venus Among The Fishes Skips And Is A She-dolphin She Is The Gay, Delighted Porpoise Sporting With Love And The Sea She Is The Female Tunny-fish, Round And Happy Among The Males And Dense With Happy Blood, Dark Rainbow Bliss In The Sea.
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Blood
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The Feelings I Don't Have I Don't Have. The Feelings I Don't Have, I Won't Say I Have. The Felings You Say You Have, You Don't Have. The Feelings You Would Like Us Both To Have, We Neither Of Us Have.
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It's Hard To Ravish A Tin Of Sardines.
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If You Believe In Your Own Sex, And Won't Have It Done Dirt To: They'll Down You. It's The One Insane Taboo Left: Sex As A Naturaland Vital Thing.
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I Prefer Unlucky Things. Luck Is Vulgar. Who Wants What Luck Would Bring? I Don't.
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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.
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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.
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I Do Esteem Individual Liberty Above Everything.
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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.
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Men
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I'd Wipe The Machines Off The Face Of The Earth Again, And End The Industrial Epoch Absolutely, Like A Black Mistake.
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Why Is A Door-knob Deader Than Anything Else?
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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.
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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.
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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.
Inspirational
Life
Beautiful
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!
Sleep
Rags
Bats
That's It! When You Come To Know Men, That's How They Are: Too Sensitive In The Wrong Place.
Men
Sensitive
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In My Very Own Self, I Am Part Of My Family.
Self
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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.
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The Autumn Always Gets Me Badly, As It Breaks Into Colours. I Want To Go South, Where There Is No Autumn, Where The Cold Doesn't Crouch Over One Like A Snow-leopard Waiting To Pounce.
Fall
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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.
Land
Sorrow
Gold
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.
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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.
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I Believe That A Man Is Converted When First He Hears The Low, Vast Murmur Of Life, Of Human Life, Troubling His Hitherto Unconscious Self.
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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.
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A Woman Has To Live Her Life, Or Live To Repent Not Having Lived It.
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Women
Repent
You Can't Insure Against The Future, Except By Really Believing In The Best Bit Of You, And In The Power Beyond It.
Believe
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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.
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May
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The Human Being Is A Most Curious Creature. He Thinks He Has Got One Soul, And He Has Got Dozens.
Thinking
Soul
Dozen
Hate's A Growing Thing Like Anything Else. It's The Inevitable Outcome Of Forcing Ideas Onto Life, Of Forcing One's Deepest Instincts; Our Deepest Feelings We Force According To Certain Ideas.
Hate
Ideas
Feelings
The Novel Is The Highest Example Of Subtle Interrelatedness That Man Has Discovered.
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Example
Subtle
Sex Is The Root Of Which Intuition Is The Foliage And Beauty Is The Flower.
Sex
Flower
Roots
The Spanish Wine, My God, It Is Foul, Catpiss Is Champagne Compared, This Is The Sulphurous Urination Of Some Aged Horse.
Horse
Food
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There Is No Evolving, Only Unfolding. The Lily Is In The Bit Of Dust Which Is Its Beginning, Lily And Nothing But Lily: And The Lily In Blossom Is A Ne Plus Ultra: There Is No Evolving Beyond.
Dust
Lilies
Evolution
One Must Learn To Love, And Go Through A Good Deal Of Suffering To Get To It... And The Journey Is Always Towards The Other Soul.
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Suffering
Never Set A Child Afloat On The Flat Sea Of Life With Only One Sail To Catch The Wind.
Children
Wind
Sea
The Soul Is A Very Perfect Judge Of Her Own Motions, If Your Mind Doesn't Dictate To Her.
Perfect
Judging
Soul
The American Grips Himself, At The Very Sources Of His Consciousness, In A Grip Of Care: And Then, To So Much Of The Rest Of Life, Is Indifferent. Whereas, The European Hasn't Got So Much Care In Him, So He Cares Much More For Life And Living.
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Literature
Care
A Woman Needn't Be Dragged Down By Her Functions.
Women
Function
A Man Must Keep His Earnestness Nimble, To Escape Ridicule.
Men
Nimble
Wit
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.
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Real
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The Essential American Soul Is Hard, Isolate, Stoic, And A Killer. It Has Never Yet Melted.
Soul
Essentials
Killers
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.
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Two
You Don't Learn Algebra With Your Blessed Soul. Can't You Look At It With Your Clear Simple Wits?
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Simple
Soul
Ethics And Equity And The Principles Of Justice Do Not Change With The Calendar.
Ethical Principles
Justice
Judging
The Novel Is The Highest Form Of Human Expression So Far Attained. Why? Because It Is So Incapable Of The Absolute.
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But Better Die Than Live Mechanically A Life That Is A Repetition Of Repetitions.
Life
Literature
Repetition
I Always Feel As If I Stood Naked For The Fire Of Almighty God To Go Through Me--and It's Rather An Awful Feeling. One Has To Be So Terribly Religious To Be An Artist.
God
Religious
Art
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.
Doors
Difficult
Be Careful
When Van Gogh Paints Sunflowers, He Reveals, Or Achieves, The Vivid Relation Between Himself, As Man, And The Sunflower, As Sunflower, At That Quick Moment Of Time. His Painting Does Not Represent The Sunflower Itself. We Shall Never Know What The Sunflower Itself Is. And The Camera Will Visualize The Sunflower Far More Perfectly Than Van Gogh Can.
Photography
Men
Sunflower
You Live By What You Thrill To, And There's The End Of It.
Thrill
Ends
Live By
What Is Pornography To One Man Is The Laughter Of Genius To Another.
Laughter
Men
Genius
No Man Is A Man Unless To His Woman He Is A Pioneer.
Leadership
Women
Men
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.
Morning
Doctors
Lust
It Is Marriage, Perhaps, Which Had Given Man The Best Of His Freedom, Given Him His Little Kingdom Of His Own Within The Big Kingdom Of The State.... It Is A True Freedom Because It Is A True Fulfilment, For Man, Woman And Children. Do We Then Want To Break Marriage? If We Do Break It, It Means We All Fall To A Far Greater Extent Under The Direct Sway Of The State.
Children
Fall
Mean
Whether I Get On In The World Is A Question; But I Certainly Don't Get On Very Well With The World.
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Success
World
Ursula And Gudrun Brangwen Sat One Morning In The Window-bay Of Their Father's House In Beldover, Working And Talking.
Morning
Father
Book
The World Is Wonderful And Beautiful And Good Beyond One's Wildest Imagination.
Beautiful
Imagination
World
A Man Will Part With Anything So Long As He's Drunk, And You're Drunk With Him.
Men
Long
Drunk
I Can Never Decide Whether My Dreams Are The Result Of My Thoughts, Or My Thoughts The Result Of My Dreams.
Inspirational
Life
Dream
When One Jumps Over The Edge, One Is Bound To Land Somewhere.
Inspirational
Land
Over The Edge
A Museum Is Not A First-hand Contact: It Is An Illustrated Lecture. And What One Wants Is The Actual Vital Touch.
Art
Museums
Hands
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.
Parent
Elements
Combination
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.
Love
Life
Best Friend
One Should Feel Inside Oneself For Right And Wrong, And Should Have The Patience To Gradually Realise One's God.
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Feels
Realising
It's Bad Taste To Be Wise All The Time, Like Being At A Perpetual Funeral.
Wise
Wisdom
Funeral
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.
Blow
Rocks
Splits
Sex Is Just Another Form Of Talk, Where You Act The Words Instead Of Saying Them.
Sexy
Sex
Sensual
Europe Is, Perhaps, The Least Worn-out Of The Continents, Because It Is The Most Lived In. A Place That Is Lived In Lives.
Home
Europe
Worn
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.
Mother
Hard Work
Men
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.
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Men
Support
The Elephant, The Huge Old Beast, Is Slow To Mate
Elephants
Beast
Mates
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.
Artist
World
Fit
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.
Marriage
Stars
Cosmos
In Masturbation There Is Nothing But Loss.
Loss
Masturbation
Only In A Novel Are All Things Given Full Play.
Writing
Play
Literature
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.
People
Society
Individualism
Imitate The Magnificent Trees That Speak No Word Of Their Rapture, But Only Breathe Largely The Luminous Breeze.
Tree
Speak
Breathe
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.
Women
Thinking
Giving
The Glamour Of Childish Days Is Upon Me, My Manhood Is Cast Down In The Flood Of Remembrance.
Music
Maturity
Remembrance
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.
Death
Dying
Rising
You Feel Free In Australia. There Is Great Relief In The Atmosphere - A Relief From Tension, From Pressure, An Absence Of Control Of Will Or Form. The Skies Open Above You And The Areas Open Around You.
Sky
Australia
Atmosphere
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.
World
Intricacy
Ghastly
Men And Women Aren't Really Dogs: They Only Look Like It And Behave Like It. Somewhere Inside There Is A Great Chagrin And A Gnawing Discontent.
Dog
Men
Looks
Sex Is The One Thing You Cannot Really Swindle; And It Is The Centre Of The Worst Swindling Of All, Emotional Swindling.... Sex Lashes Out Against Counterfeit Emotion, And Is Ruthless, Devastating Against False Love.
Sex
Emotional
False Love
We Ought To Dance With Rapture That We Should Be Alive And In The Flesh, And Part Of The Living, Incarnate Cosmos.
Dance
Dancing
Cosmos
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.
Travel
Adventure
Men
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.
Eye
Blood
Sea
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
Love You
Love Is
Long
The Tragedy Is When You've Got Sex In The Head Instead Of Down Where It Belongs.
Love
Life
Sex
We've Got To Live, No Matter How Many Skies Have Fallen.
Love
Inspirational
Sky
The Cruelest Thing A Man Can Do To A Woman Is To Portray Her As Perfection.
Men
Perfection
Can Do
The Fairest Thing In Nature, A Flower, Still Has Its Roots In Earth And Manure.
Nature
Flower
Roots
I Hold That The Parentheses Are By Far The Most Important Parts Of A Non-business Letter.
Important
Letters
Letter Writing
In The Short Summer Night She Learned So Much. She Would Have Thought A Woman Would Have Died Of Shame... She Felt, Now, She Had Come To The Real Bedrock Of Her Nature, And Was Essentially Shameless. She Was Her Sensual Self, Naked An Unashamed. She Felt A Triumph, Almost A Vainglory. So! That Was How It Was! That Was Life! That Was How Onself Really Was! There Was Nothing Left To Disguise Or Be Ashamed Of. She Shared Her Ultimate Nakedness With A Man, Another Being.
Summer
Real
Night
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.
Leadership
Pride
Dark
Sing Then The Core Of Dark And Absolute Oblivion Where The Soul At Last Is Lost In Utter Peace.
Dark
Soul
Singing
The Map Appears To Us More Real Than The Land.
Real
Reality
Land
Never Trust The Artist. Trust The Tale. The Proper Function Of The Critic Is To Save The Tale From The Artist Who Created It.
Artist
Literature
Never Trust
Literature Is A Toil And A Snare, A Curse That Bites Deep.
Art
Book
Toil
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.
Sex
Lying
Heart
I Cannot Cure Myself Of That Most Woeful Of Youth's Follies - Thinking That Those Who Care About Us Will Care For The Things That Mean Much To Us.
Mean
Thinking
Who Cares
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.
Reality
Creative
Departed
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.
Stupid
Moving
Mountain
It's Not Art For Art's Sake, It's Art For My Sake.
Art
Sake
Thought Is A Man In His Wholeness, Wholly Attending.
Men
Attending
Wholeness
The More I See Of Democracy The More I Dislike It. It Just Brings Everything Down To The Mere Vulgar Level Of Wages And Prices, Electric Light And Water Closets, And Nothing Else.
Light
Water
Democracy
You're Always Begging Things To Love You," He Said, "as If You Were A Beggar For Love. Even The Flowers, You Have To Fawn On Them--
Love You
Flower
Fawns
Happiness Was A Term Of Hypocrisy Used To Bluff Other People.
People
Hypocrisy
Used
Now Man Cannot Live Without Some Vision Of Himself. But Still Less Can He Live With A Vision That Is Not True To His Inner Experience And Inner Feeling.
Men
Feelings
Vision
For Man, The Vast Marvel Is To Be Alive. For Man, As For Flower And Beast And Bird, The Supreme Triumph Is To Be Most Vividly, Most Perfectly Alive. Whatever The Unborn May Know, They Cannot Know The Beauty, The Marvel Of Being Alive In The Flesh. The Dead May Look After The Afterwards. But The Magnificent Here And Now Of Life In The Flesh Is Ours, And Ours Alone, And Ours Only For A Time.
Life
Flower
Men
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?
Girl
Mean
Perfect
I Think Societal Instinct Much Deeper Than Sex Instinct — And Societal Repression Much More Devastating.
Sex
Thinking
Society
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.
Civilization
Oneness
Age
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.
Children
Firsts
Educate
The Great Crime Which The Moneyed Classes And Promoters Of Industry Committed In The Palmy Victorian Days Was The Condemning Of The Workers To Ugliness, Ugliness, Ugliness: Meanness And Formless And Ugly Surroundings, Ugly Ideals, Ugly Religion, Ugly Hope, Ugly Love, Ugly Clothes, Ugly Furniture, Ugly Houses, Ugly Relationship Between Workers And Employers. The Human Soul Needs Actual Beauty More Than Bread.
Class
Clothes
House
Don't Talk To Me Any More About Poetry For Months -- Unless It Is Other Men's Work. I Really Love Verse, Even Rubbish. But I'm Fearfully Busy At A Novel, And Brush All The Gossamer Of Verse Off My Face.
Men
Rubbish
Months
When Each Thing Is Unique In Itself, There Can Be No Comparison Made.... There Is Only This Strange Recognition Of Present Otherness.
Equality
Unique
Differences
Logic Might Be Unanswerable Because It Was So Absolutely Wrong.
Might
Logic
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.
Art
Book
Reading
Any Inhibition Must Be Wrong, Since Inevitably In The End It Causes Neurosis And Insanity.
Insanity
Neurosis
Causes
You Love Me So Much, You Want To Put Me In Your Pocket. And I Should Die There Smothered.
Love
Pockets
Want
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.
Men
Religion
Atheism
The Modern Pantheist Not Only Sees The God In Everything, He Takes Photographs Of It.
Atheism
Modern
Photograph
The Near Touch Of Death May Be A Release Into Life; If Only It Will Break The Egoistic Will, And Release That Other Flow.
Death
Vanity
Broken
A House O' Women Is As Dead As A House Wi' No Fire, To My Thinkin'. I'm Not A Spider As Likes To Corner Myself. I Like A Man About, If He's Only Something To Snap At.
Men
Fire
House
I Know The Greatness Of Christianity; It Is A Past Greatness.. I Live In 1924, And The Christian Venture Is Done.
Christian
Past
Greatness
Only This Shimmeriness Is The Real Living. The Shape Is A Dead Crust. The Shimmer Is Inside Really.
Life
Death
Real
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.
Loneliness
Filled In
Waiting
But Then Peace, Peace! I Am So Mistrustful Of It: So Much Afraid That It Means A Sort Of Weakness And Giving In.
Peace
Mean
Giving
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.
Love
Heart
Rocks
Where Sanity Is There God Is.
God
Sanity
The Sense Of Wonder, That Is Our Sixth Sense.
Wonder
Sixth Sense
Sense Of Wonder
The Pyramids Of Egypt Will Not Last A Moment Compared To The Daisy.
Egypt
Pyramids
Lasts
The Only Justice Is To Follow The Sincere Intuition Of The Soul, Angry Or Gentle. Anger Is Just, And Pity Is Just, But Judgement Is Never Just.
Anger
Justice
Judgement
It Was Not The Passion That Was New To Her, It Was The Yearning Adoration. She Knew She Had Always Feared It, For It Left Her Helpless; She Feared It Still, Lest If Se Adored Him Too Much, Then She Would Lose Herself, Become Effaced, And She Did Not Want To Be Effaced, A Slave, Like A Savage Woman. She Must Not Become A Slave. She Feared Her Adoration, Yet She Would Not At Once Fight Against It.
Passion
Fighting
Savages
Be Sure Your Sins Will Find You Out, Especially If You're Married And Her Name's Bertha
Names
Married
Sin
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.
Horse
Men
Gone
We Don't Exist Unless We Are Deeply And Sensually In Touch With That Which Can Be Touched But Not Known.
Touched
Known
I Like To Write When I Feel Spiteful; It's Like Having A Good Sneeze.
Writing
Sneezing
Spiteful
People Always Make War When They Say They Love Peace.
Love
Peace
War
One Should Be Religious In Everything, Have God, Whatever God Might Be, Present In Everything.
Religious
Might
Should
The Trees Down The Boulevard Stand Naked In Thought, Their Abundant Summery Wordage Silenced, Caught In The Grim Undertow; Naked The Trees Confront Implacable Winter's Long, Cross-questioning Brunt.
Winter
Long
Tree
Whatever Men You Take, Keep The Idea Of Man Intact: Let Your Soul Wait Whether Your Body Does Or Not.
Sex
Men
Ideas
Who Knows The Power That Saturn Has Over Us, Or Venus? But It Is A Vital Power, Rippling Exquisitely Through Us All The Time.
Astrology
Venus
Saturn
I Never Saw A Wild Thing Sorry For Itself
Sorry
Saws
Self Pity
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.
Mother
Self
Soul
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.
Hate
Class
Ideas
You Will Not Easily Get A Man To Believe That His Carnal Love For The Woman He Has Made His Wife Is As High A Love As That He Feltfor His Mother Or Sister.
Sister
Mother
Sex
The Great Mass Of Humanity Should Never Learn To Read Or Write.
Writing
Humanity
Literature
Men! The Only Animal In The World To Fear.
Animal
Men
World
Let There Be An End ... Of All This Welter Of Pity, Which Is Only Self-pity Reflected Onto Some Obvious Surface.
Self
Pity
Ends
It Seems To Me Absolutely True, That Our World, Which Appears To Us The Surface Of All Things, Is Really The Bottom Of A Deep Ocean: All Our Trees Are Submarine Growths, And We Are Weird, Scaly-clad Submarine Fauna, Feeding Ourselves On Offal Like Shrimps. Only Occasionally The Soul Rises Gasping Through The Fathomless Fathoms Under Which We Live, Far Up To The Surface Of The Ether, Where There Is True Air.
Ocean
Our World
Air
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.
Love
Bible
Eagles
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