David H. Lawrence

For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive.

Here, you can't live as you like - in any way or circumstance. You're like a bit out of those coloured mosaics in the hall, you have to fit in your own set, fit into your own pattern, because you're put there from the first. But you don't want to be like a fixed bit of a mosaic - you want to fuse into life, and melt and mix with the rest of folk, to have some things burned out of you.

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.

I want to live my life so that my nights are not full of regrets.

How beautiful maleness is, if it finds its right expression.

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 star, or you will just stay where you are.

The mind can assert anything and pretend it has proved it. My beliefs I test on my body, on my intuitional consciousness, and when I get a response there, then I accept.

Never trust the artist. Trust the tale.

Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot.

But better die than live mechanically a life that is a repetition of repetitions.

There are three cures for ennui: sleep, drink and travel.

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A bird will fall frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.

I have never seen a wild thing feel sorry for itself. A little bird will fall dead, frozen from a bough, without ever having felt sorry for itself.