In the last book D. H Lawrence wrote in his life, I found so much of today. A book banned and confidently opposed by so many for the inclusion of explicit (but not gratuitous) sex and two words we use freely today that were unspeakable in 1928. However, the opposition missed the heart of the text, which is one of passion and love. Here are some of the quotes that really struck me. This is one of the best books I've read in a long time and I hope that you consider it. It's proof that as a reader, it's truly possible to find modernity in a classic.
"Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habits, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen." (page 1)
"Too much death and horror. A man needed support and comfort. A man needed to have an anchor in the safe world. A man needed a wife." (page 9)
"...they were as intimate as two people who stand together on a sinking ship." (page 9)
"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." (page 30)
"...sex is just another form of talk, where you act the words instead of saying them." (page 33)
"Ye shall know a tree by its fruit." (page 36)
"And if you've got nothing in your life but the mental life, then you yourself are a plucked apple...you've fallen off the tree. And then it is a logical necessity for a plucked apple to go bad." (page 38)
"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." (page 155)
"At the bottom of her soul, fundamentally, she had needed this phallic hunting out, she had secretly wanted it, and she had believed that she would never get it. Now suddenly there it was, and a man was sharing her last and final nakedness, she was shameless. " (page 268)
"While the wireless is active, there are no ends of the earth." (page 304)
"Money poisons you when you've got it, and it starves you when you haven't." (page 326)
"A man has to fend and fettle for the best, and then trust in something beyond himself. You can't insure against the future, except by really believing in the best bit of you, and in the power beyond it. So I believe in the little flame between us." (page 327)
"Well, so many words, because I can't touch you. If I could sleep with my arms around you, the ink could stay in the bottle." (page 328)
From "A Propos of Lady Chatterly's Lover" (at the end of the book):
"I put forth this novel as an honest, healthy book, necessary for us today." (page 331)
"People with minds realize that they aren't shocked, and never really were: and they experience a sense of relief." (page 331)
"We are today, as human beings, evolved and cultured far beyond the taboos which are inherent in our culture. This is a very important fact to realize." (page 331)
"Obscenity only comes in when the mind despises and fears the body, and the body hates and resists the mind." (page 333)
"...you can fool most people all the time, and all people most of the time, but not all people all the time..." (page 336)
"There are few married people today, and few unmarried, who have not felt an intense and vivid hatred against marriage itself, marriage as an institution and an imposition upon human life. Far greater than the revolt against governments is this revolt against marriage." (page 344)
"Marriage is no marriage that is not a correspondence of blood. For the blood is the substance of the soul, and of the deepest consciousness. It is by blood that we are: and it is by the heart and the liver that we live and move and have our being. In the blood, knowing and being, or feeling, are one and undivided: no serpent and no apple has caused the split. So that only when the conjunction is of the blood, is marriage truly marriage." (page 349)
"This is marriage, this circuit of the two rivers, this communion of the two blood-streams, this, and nothing else; all the religions know." (page 349)
