Sons and Lovers Quotes

“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.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“Sleep is still most perfect, in spite of hygienists, when it is shared with a beloved. The warmth, the security and peace of soul, the utter comfort from the touch of the other, knits the sleep, so that it takes the body and soul completely in its healing.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“She had borne so long this cruelty of belonging to him and not being claimed by him.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“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.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“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.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“Night, in which everything was lost, went reaching out, beyond stars and sun. Stars and sun, a few bright grains, went spiraling round for terror, and holding each other in embrace, there in a darkness that outpassed them all, and left them tiny and daunted. So much, and himself, infinitesimal, at the core of nothingness, and yet not nothing.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“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--”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“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.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“...you love me so much, you want to put me in your pocket. And there I will die smothered.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“He felt that she wanted the soul out of his body and not him. All his strength and energy she drew into herself through some channel which united them. She did not want to meet him so that there were two of them man and woman together. She wanted to draw all of him into her. It urged him to an intensity like madness which fascinated him as drug-taking might. He was discussing Michael Angelo. It felt to her as if she were fingering the very quivering tissue the very protoplasm of life as she heard him. It gave her deepest satisfaction. And in the end it frightened her. There he lay in the white intensity of his search and his voice gradually filled her with fear so level it was almost inhuman as if in a trance.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“That's how women are with me " said Paul. "They want me like mad but they don't want to belong to me.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“Sleep is still most perfect, in spite of hygienists, when it is shared with a beloved.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“Recklessness is almost a man's revenge on his woman.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“I don’t want the corpses of flowers about me.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“You have a place in my nature which no one else could fill. You have played a fundamental part in my development. And this grief, which has been like a clod between our two souls, does it not begin to dissipate? Ours is not an everyday affection. As yet, we are mortal, and to live side by side with one another would be dreadful, for somehow, with you I cannot long be trivial, and, you know, to be always beyond this mortal state would be to lose it. If people marry, they must live together as affectionate humans who may be commonplace with each other without feeling awkward- not as two souls. So I feel it.
I might marry in the years to come. It would be a woman I could kiss and embrace, whom I could make the mother of my children, whom I could talk to playfully, trivially, earnestly, but never with this dreadful seriousness. See how fate has disposed things. You, you might marry, a man who would not pour himself out like fire before you. I wonder if you understand- I wonder if I understand myself.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“Can you never like things without clutching them as if you wanted to pull the heart out of them?”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“You know, he said, with an effort, 'if one person loves, the other does.'
…'I hope so, because if it were not, love might be a very terrible thing,' she said.
'Yes, but it is - at least with most people,' he answered.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“How she loved to listen when he thought only the horse could hear.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“To be rid of our individuality, which is our will, which is our effort- to live effortless, a kind of conscious sleep- that is very beautiful, I think- that is our after life- our immortality.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“You're always begging things to love you as if you were a beggar for love. Even the flowers, you have to fawn on them -- 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.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“There was only this one lamp-post. Behind was the great scoop of darkness, as if all the night were there.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“And Miriam also refused to be approached. She was afraid of being set at nought, as by her own brothers. The girl was romantic in her soul. Everywhere was a Walter Scott heroine being loved by men with helmets or with plumes in their caps. She herself was something of a princess turned into a swine-girl in her own imagination. And she was afraid lest this boy, who, nevertheless, looked something like a Walter Scott hero, who could paint and speak French, and knew what algebra meant, and who went by train to Nottingham every day, might consider her simply as the swine-girl, unable to perceive the princess beneath; so she held aloof.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and lovers

“So he was always in the town at one place or another, drinking, knocking about with the men he knew. It really wearied him. He talked to barmaids, to almost any woman, but there was that dark, strained look in his eyes, as if he were hunting something.

Everything seemed so different, so unreal. There seemed no reason why people should go along the street, and houses pile up in the daylight. There seemed no reason why these things should occupy the space, instead of leaving it empty. His friends talked to him: he heard the sounds, and he answered. But why there should be the noise of speech he could not understand.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“She looked at her roses. They were white, some incurved and holy, others expanded in an ecstacy. The tree was dark as a shadow. She lifted her hand impulsively to the flowers; she went forward and touched them in worship.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“And as he went about arranging and as he sat talking there seemed something false about him and out of tune.Watching him unknown she said to herself there was no stability about him. He was when he was in one mood. And now he looked paltry and insignificant. There was nothing stable about him. Her husband had more manly dignity. At any rate he did not waft about with any wind. There was something evanescent about Morel she thought something shifting and false. He would never make sure ground for any woman to stand on. She despised him rather for his shrinking together getting smaller. Her husband at least was manly and when he was beaten gave in. but this other would never own to being beaten. He would shift round and round, get smaller.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“And she had discovered him, discovered in him a rare potentiality, discovered his loneliness.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“Lads learn nothing nowadays, but how to recite poetry and play the fiddle.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“It hurt her most of all, this failure to love him,”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“Don't ask me anything about the future,” he said miserably. “I don't know anything. Be with me now, will you, no matter what it is?” And she took him in her arms.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“And do you call yours a divine discontent?'
'Yes. I don't care about its divinity. But damn your happiness! So long as life's full, it doesn't matter whether it's happy or not. I'm afraid your happiness would bore me.”
― D. H. Lawrence, SONS AND LOVERS