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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!

-D. H. Lawrence

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You're Spending Your Life

D. H. Lawrence

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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!

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More From D. H. Lawrence

It's Not Art For Art's Sake, It's Art For My Sake.

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.

What's That As Flies Without Wings, Your Ladyship? Time! Time!

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

There Is A Sixth Sense, The Natural Religious Sense, The Sense Of Wonder.

The True Unconscious Is The Well-head, The Fountain Of Real Motivity. The Sex Of Which Adam And Eve Became Conscious Derived Fromthe Very God Who Bade Them Be Not Conscious Of It.

Man Has Little Needs And Deeper Needs. We Have Fallen Into The Mistake Of Living From Our Little Needs Till We Have Almost Lost Our Deeper Needs In A Sort Of Madness.

The Weakness Of Modern Tragedy[is That] Transgression Against The Social Code Is Made To Bring Destruction, As Though The Social Code Worked Our Irrevocable Fate.

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.

Logic Might Be Unanswerable Because It Was So Absolutely Wrong.

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

Having Achieved And Accomplished Love, Then The Man Passes Into The Unknown. He Has Become Himself, His Tale Is Told.

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

With A Woman, A Man Always Wants To Let Himself Go. And It Is Precisely With A Woman That He Should Never Let Himself Go ... But Stick To His Innermost Belief And Meet Her Just There.

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

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.

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.

People Always Make War When They Say They Love Peace.

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.

But Having More Freedom She Only Became More Profoundly Aware Of The Big Want. She Wanted So Many Things. She Wanted To Read Great, Beautiful Books, And Be Rich With Them; She Wanted To See Beautiful Things, And Have The Joy Of Them For Ever; She Wanted To Know Big, Free People; And There Remained Always The Want She Could Put No Name To? It Was So Difficult. There Were So Many Things, So Much To Meet And Surpass. And One Never Knew Where One Was Going.

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.

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.

Sleep Is A Hint Of Lovely Oblivion.

Sex Is Our Deepest Form Of Consciousness. It Is Utterly Non-ideal, Non-mental. It Is Pure Blood-consciousness.... It Is The Consciousness Of The Night, When The Soul Is Almost Asleep.

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.

I Think Societal Instinct Much Deeper Than Sex Instinct — And Societal Repression Much More Devastating.

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.

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

Never Trust The Artist. Trust The Tale. The Proper Function Of The Critic Is To Save The Tale From The Artist Who Created It.

The Real Tragedy Of England, As I See It, Is The Tragedy Of Ugliness. The Country Is So Lovely: The Man-made England Is So Vile.

Men And Women Should Stay Apart, Till Their Hearts Grow Gentle Towards One Another Again.

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

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.

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.

The Real Trouble About Women Is That They Must Always Go On Trying To Adapt Themselves To Men's Theories Of Women, As They Alwayshave Done. When A Woman Is Thoroughly Herself, She Is Being What Her Type Of Man Wants Her To Be. When A Woman Is Hysterical It's Because She Doesn't Quite Know What To Be, Which Pattern To Follow, Which Man's Picture Of Woman To Live Up To.

And That Is How We Are. By Strength Of Will We Cut Off Our Inner Intuitive Knowledge From Admitted Consciousness. This Causes A State Of Dread, Or Apprehension, Which Makes The Blow Ten Times Worse When It Does Fall.

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.

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

The Human Consciousness Is Really Homogeneous. There Is No Complete Forgetting, Even In Death.

Let Yourself Fall In Love. If You Have Not Done So Already, You Are Wasting Your Life.

Falling In Love

Loud Peace Propaganda Makes War Seem Imminent.

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

Sometimes Snakes Can’t Slough. They Can’t Burst Their Old Skin. Then They Go Sick And Die Inside The Old Skin, And Nobody Ever Sees The New Pattern. It Needs A Real Desperate Recklessness To Burst Your Old Skin At Last. You Simply Don’t Care What Happens To You, If You Rip Yourself In Two, So Long As You Do Get Out.

Another Head - And A Black Alpaca Jacket And A Serviette This Time - To Tell Us Coffee Is Ready. Not Before It Is Time, Too.

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

It Is So Much More Difficult To Live With One's Body Than With One's Soul. One's Body Is So Much More Exacting: What It Won't Have It Won't Have, And Nothing Can Make Bitter Into Sweet.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Now In November Nearer Comes The Sun Down The Abandoned Heaven.

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

Nothing But Love Has Made The Dog Lose His Wild Freedom, To Become The Servant Of Man.

The Word Arse Is As Much God As The Word Face. It Must Be So, Otherwise You Cut Off Your God At The Waist.

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.

Do Not Allow To Slip Away From You Freedoms The People Who Came Before You Won With Such Hard Knocks.

Any Inhibition Must Be Wrong, Since Inevitably In The End It Causes Neurosis And Insanity.

The Cruelest Thing A Man Can Do To A Woman Is To Portray Her As Perfection.

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.

The Business Of Art Is To Reveal The Relation Between Man And His Environment.

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.

Every Man Has A Mob Self And An Individual Self, In Varying Proportions.

Mystic Equality Lies In Abstraction, Not In Having Or In Doing, Which Are Processes. In Function And Process, One Man, One Part, Must Of Necessity Be Subordinate To Another. It Is A Condition Of Being.

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

We Are Dying, We Are Dying, Piecemeal Our Bodies Are Dying And Our Strength Leaves Us, And Our Soul Cowers Naked In The Dark Rain Over The Flood, Cowering In The Last Branches Of The Tree Of Our Life.

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.

I Believe That There Was A Great Age, A Great Epoch When Man Did Not Make War: Previous To 2000 B.c. Then The Self Had Not Reallybecome Aware Of Itself, It Had Not Separated Itself Off, The Spirit Was Not Yet Born, So There Was No Internal Conflict, And Hence No Permanent External Conflict.

Sex And Beauty Are Inseparable, Like Life And Consciousness. And The Intelligence Which Goes With Sex And Beauty, And Arises Out Of Sex And Beauty, Is Intuition.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

If We Lose Our Sanity ... We Can But Howl The Lugubrious Howl Of Idiots, The Howl Of The Utterly Lost Howling Their Nowhereness.

Sex Is Just Another Form Of Talk, Where You Act The Words Instead Of Saying Them.

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

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.

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.

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.

I Believe A Man Is Born First Unto Himself - For The Happy Developing Of Himself, While The World Is A Nursery, And The Pretty Things Are To Be Snatched For, And Pleasant Things Tasted; Some People Seem To Exist Thus Right To The End. But Most Are Born Again On Entering Manhood; Then They Are Born To Humanity, To A Consciousness Of All The Laughing, And The Never-ceasing Murmur Of Pain And Sorrow That Comes From The Terrible Multitudes Of Brothers.

The Human Soul Needs Actual Beauty Even More Than Bread.

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.

The Unhappiness Of A Wife With A Good Husband Is Much More Devastating Than The Unhappiness Of A Wife With A Bad Husband.

I Can Never Decide Whether My Dreams Are The Result Of My Thoughts, Or My Thoughts The Result Of My Dreams.

The Acrid Scents Of Autumn, Reminiscent Of Slinking Beasts, Make Me Fear

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

Far Back, Far Back In Our Dark Soul The Horse Prances.

The Map Appears To Us More Real Than The Land.

Tragedy Looks To Me Like Man In Love With His Own Defeat. Which Is Only A Sloppy Way Of Being In Love With Yourself.

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

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.

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

We Must Know, If Only In Order To Learn Not To Know. The Supreme Lesson Of Human Consciousness Is To Learn How Not To Know. That Is, How Not To Interfere.

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

When Passion Is Dead, Or Absent, Then The Magnificent Throb Of Beauty Is Incomprehensible And Even A Little Despicable.

Men! The Only Animal In The World To Fear.

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.

Things Men Have Made With Wakened Hands, And Put Soft Life Into Are Awake Through Years With Transferred Touch, And Go On Glowing For Long Years. And For This Reason, Some Old Things Are Lovely Warm Still With The Life Of Forgotten Men Who Made Them.

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

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.

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

And All The Time She Felt The Reflection Of His Hopelessness In Her. She Couldn't Quite, Quite Love In Hoplessness. And He, Being Hopeless, Couldn't Ever Love At All.

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.

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

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

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

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, Why Are People All Balls Of Bitter Dust? Because They Won't Fall Off The Tree When They're Ripe. They Hang On To Their Old Positions When The Position Is Overpast, Till They Become Infested With Little Worms And Dry-rot.

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

I Can Only See Death And More Death, Till We Are Black And Swollen With Death.

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

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

Freedom Is A Very Great Reality, But It Means Above All Things, Freedom From Lies.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

The Great Home Of The Soul Is The Open Road.

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

Sex And Beauty Are Inseparable, Like Life And Consciousness. And The Intelligence Which Goes With Sex And Beauty, And Arises Out Of Sex And Beauty, Is Intuition." "and They Rock, And They Rock, Through The Sensual Ageless Ages On The Depths Of The Seven Seas, And Through The Salt They Reel With Drunken Delight And In The Tropics Tremble They With Love And Roll With Massive, Strong Desire, Like Gods.

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

Love's A Dog In A Manger.

In Every Living Thing There Is The Desire For Love.

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.

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

God Doesn't Know Things. He Is Things.

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

Europe Is, Perhaps, The Least Worn-out Of The Continents, Because It Is The Most Lived In. A Place That Is Lived In Lives.

The Only Reality Was Nothingness, And Over It A Hypocrisy Of Words.

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.

There Are Vast Realms Of Consciousness Still Undreamed Of -vast Ranges Of Experience, Like Humming Of Unseen Harps, We Know Nothing Of, Within Us.

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

A Young Man Is Afraid Of His Demon And Puts His Hand Over The Demon's Mouth Sometimes And Speaks For Him. And The Things The Young Man Says Are Very Rarely Poetry.

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.

And This Is The Final Meaning Of Work: The Extension Of Human Consciousness. The Lesser Meaning Of Work Is The Achieving Of Self-preservation.

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

Isn't It God's Own Image? Tramping His Thirty Miles A Day After Partridges, Or A Little Rubber Ball? Wouldn't You Like To Be Like That, Well Off, And Quite The Thing?

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

Finding Yourself

Let There Be An End ... Of All This Welter Of Pity, Which Is Only Self-pity Reflected Onto Some Obvious Surface.

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

Life Is Ours To Be Spent, Not To Be Saved.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Can You Understand How Cruelly I Feel The Lack Of Friends Who Will Believe In Me A Bit?

You Don't Want To Be An Animal, You Want To Observe Your Own Animal Functions, So As To Get A Mental Thrill Out Of Them. It Is Allpurely Secondary--and More Decadent Than The Most Hide-bound Intellectualism.

An Illusion Which Is A Real Experience Is Worth Having.

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

I'm Not Sure If A Mental Relation With A Woman Doesn't Make It Impossible To Love Her. To Know The Mind Of A Woman Is To End In Hating Her. Love Means The Pre-cognitive Flow...it Is The Honest State Before The Apple.

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.

Any Novel Of Importance Has A Purpose. If Only The "purpose" Be Large Enough, And Not At Outs With The Passional Inspiration.

How Sure I Feel, How Warm And Strong And Happy For The Future! How Sure The Future Is Within Me; I Am Like A Seed With A Perfect Flower Enclosed.

It's Bad Taste To Be Wise All The Time, Like Being At A Perpetual Funeral.

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.

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

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 The Puritan All Things Are Impure, As Somebody Says.

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.

When Each Thing Is Unique In Itself, There Can Be No Comparison Made.... There Is Only This Strange Recognition Of Present Otherness.

But Then Peace, Peace! I Am So Mistrustful Of It: So Much Afraid That It Means A Sort Of Weakness And Giving In.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

He Always Ran Away From The Battle With Himself. Even In His Own Heart's Privacy, He Excused Himself, Saying, "if She Hadn't Said So-and-so, It Would Never Have Happened.

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?

Why Has Mankind Had Such A Craving To Be Imposed Upon? Why This Lust After Imposing Creeds, Imposing Deeds, Imposing Buildings, Imposing Language, Imposing Works Of Art? The Thing Becomes An Imposition And A Weariness At Last. Give Us Things That Are Alive And Flexible, Which Won't Last Too Long And Become An Obstruction And A Weariness. Even Michelangelo Becomes At Last A Lump And A Burden And A Bore. It Is So Hard To See Past Him.

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

If I Were The Moon, I Know Where I Would Fall Down.

The Moon Is A White Strange World, Great, White, Soft-seeming Globe In The Night Sky, And What She Actually Communicates To Me Across Space I Shall Never Fully Know. But The Moon That Pulls The Tides, And The Moon That Controls The Menstrual Periods Of Women, And The Moon That Touches The Lunatics, She Is Not The Mere Dead Lump Of The Astronomist. . . . When We Describe The Moon As Dead, We Are Describing The Deadness In Ourselves. When We Find Space So Hideously Void, We Are Describing Our Own Unbearable Emptiness.

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

The Near End Of The Street Was Rather Dark And Had Mostly Vegetable Shops. Abundance Of Vegetables - Piles Of White And Green Fennel, Like Celery, And Great Sheaves Of Young, Purplish, Sea-dust-coloured Artichokes . . . Long Strings Of Dried Figs, Mountains Of Big Oranges, Scarlet Large Peppers, A Large Slice Of Pumpkin, A Great Mass Of Colours And Vegetable Freshness. . . .

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

I Wonder Which Was More Frightened Among Old Tribes -- Those Bursting Out Of Their Darkness Of Woods Upon All The Space Of Light, Or Those From The Open Tiptoeing Into The Forests.

That Was The Birth Of Sin. Not Doing It, But Knowing About It. Before The Apple, [adam And Eve] Had Shut Their Eyes And Their Minds Had Gone Dark. Now, They Peeped And Pried And Imagined. They Watched Themselves.

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

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.

O Pity The Dead That Are Dead, But Cannot Make The Journey, Still They Moan And Beat Against The Silvery Adamant Walls Of Life's Exclusive City.

Instead Of Chopping Yourself Down To Fit The World, Chop The World Down To Fit Yourself.

Your Most Vital Necessity In This Life Is That You Shall Love Your Wife Completely And Implicitly And In An Entire Nakedness Of Body And Spirit.... This That I Tell You Is My Message As Far As I've Got Any.

What You Intuitively Desire, That Is Possible To You.

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.

They Wanted Genuine Intimacy, But They Could Not Get Even Normally Near To Anyone, Because They Scorned To Take The First Steps, They Scorned The Triviality Which Forms Common Human Intercourse.

Satire Exists For The Purpose Of Killing The Social Being [for The Sake Of] The True Individual, The Real Human Being.

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.

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

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.

For How Can A Man Stand, Unless He Have Something Sure Under His Feet. Can A Man Tread The Unstable Water All His Life, And Call That Standing? Better Give In And Drown At Once.

Eat And Carouse With Bacchus, Or Munch Dry Bread With Jesus, But Don't Sit Down Without One Of The Gods.

Tragedy Ought Really To Be A Great Kick At Misery.

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Jerome Lawrence

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