R.J. Lawrence Quotes

The history of our era is the nauseating and repulsive history of the crucifixion of the procreative body for the glorification ofthe spirit.

I can only see death and more death, till we are black and swollen with death.

He who gets nearer the sun is leader, the aristocrat of aristocrats, or he who, like Dostoevsky, gets nearest the moon of our non-being.

If I take my whole, passionate, spiritual and physical love to the woman who in return loves me, that is how I serve God. And my hymn and my game of joy is my work.

America exhausts the springs of one's soul - I suppose that's what it exists for. It lives to see all real spontaneity expire. But anyhow it doesn't grind on an old nerve as Europe seems to.

If you try to nail anything down, in the novel, either it kills the novel, or the novel gets up and walks away with the nail.

One should feel inside oneself for right and wrong, and should have the patience to gradually realise one's God.

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.

I do esteem individual liberty above everything. What is a nation for, but to secure the maximum liberty to every individual?

Only the flow matters; live and let live, love and let love. There is no point in love.

I believe the nearest I've come to perfect love was with a young coal-miner when I was about 16.

You don't learn algebra with your blessed soul. Can't you look at it with your clear simple wits?

But I like the feel of men on things, while they're alive. There's a feel of men about trucks, because they've been handled with men's hands, all of them.

The sense of wonder, that is our sixth sense.

I'd wipe the machines off the face of the earth again, and end the industrial epoch absolutely, like a black mistake.

Give up bearing children and bear hope and love and devotion to those already born.

Democracy and equality try to denythe mystic recognition of difference and innate priority, the joy of obedience and the sacred responsibility of authority.

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.

I should think the American admiration of five-minute tourists has done more to kill the sacredness of old European beauty and aspiration than multitudes of bombs would have done.

Why does the thin grey strand Floating up from the forgotten Cigarette between my fingers, Why does it trouble me?

So slowly the hot elephant hearts grow full of desire, and the great beasts mate in secret at last, hiding their fire.

At the back of my life's horizon, where the dreamings of past lives crowd.

Homer was wrong in saying, "Would that strife might pass away from among gods and men!" He did not see that he was praying for the destruction of the universe.

Let there be an end ... of all this welter of pity, which is only self-pity reflected onto some obvious surface.

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.

Along the avenue of cypresses, All in their scarlet cloaks and surplices Of linen, go the chanting choristers, The priests in gold and black, the villagers. . . .

I like Australia less and less. The hateful newness, the democratic conceit, every man a little pope of perfection.

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!

The only reality was nothingness, and over it a hypocrisy of words.

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?

Money is the seal and stamp of success.

Love's a dog in a manger.

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.

Sacred love is selfless, seeking not its own. The lover serves his beloved and seeks perfect communion of oneness with her.

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.

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.

The day of the absolute is over, and we're in for the strange gods once more.

How can any man be free without a soul of his own, that he believes in and won't sell at any price?

A man will part with anything so long as he's drunk, and you're drunk with him.

And woman is the same as horses: two wills act in opposition inside her. With one will she wants to subject herself utterly. With the other she wants to bolt, and pitch her rider to perdition.

Death is ... a travelling asunder into elemental chaos. And from the elemental chaos all is cast forth again into creation. Therefore death also is but a cul-de-sac, a melting-pot.

Whatever God there is is slowly eliminating the guts and alimentary system from the human being, to evolve a higher, more spiritual being.

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.

Happiness was a term of hypocrisy used to bluff other people.

Where sanity is there God is.

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?

Beware of absolutes. There are many gods.

Pure morality is only an instinctive adjustment which the soul makes.

For us to go to Italy and to penetrate into Italy is like a most fascinating act of self-discovery

The glamour Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast Down in the flood of remembrance.