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.
D. H. LawrenceRead
Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made personal, merely personal feeling. This is what is the matter with us: we are bleeding at the roots because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars. Love has become a grinning mockery because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the Tree of Life and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on how the personal interpretation of love can lead to its destruction and loss of essence.
D. H. Lawrence expresses deep concern over the way love has been tamed and personalizes it to the point of turning it into a mere shadow of its true self. He suggests that humanity's disconnect from nature and the universe has stripped love of its vitality, comparing it to a flower cut from its stem, which cannot survive without its roots in the 'Tree of Life.' This metaphor highlights the idea that love, in its truest form, is interlinked with the broader elements of existence and cannot thrive in isolation.
Themes
LoveNatureConnectionExistenceLoss
In practice
Example use cases
During a discussion about the complexities of romantic relationships, one might invoke this quote to emphasize the importance of nurturing love in its natural context.
More from D. H. Lawrence
All quotes →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.
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And besides, look at elder flowers and bluebells-they are a sign that pure creation takes place - even the butterfly. But humanity never gets beyond the caterpillar stage -it rots in the chrysalis, it never will have wings.It is anti-creation, like monkeys and baboons.
D. H. LawrenceRead
The Christian fear of the pagan outlook has damaged the whole consciousness of man.
D. H. LawrenceRead
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.
D. H. LawrenceRead
... he preferred his own madness, to the regular sanity. He rejoiced in his own madness, he was free. He did not want that old sanity of the world, which was become so repulsive. He rejoiced in the new-found world of his madness. It was so fresh and delicate and so satisfying.
D. H. LawrenceRead
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