Quotes from The Complete Poems (Poetry Library)

D.H. Lawrence ·  704 pages

Rating: (1.6K votes)


“I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.”
― D.H. Lawrence, quote from The Complete Poems (Poetry Library)


“Nobody knows you.
You don't know yourself.
And I, who am half in love with you,
What am I in love with?
My own imaginings?”
― D.H. Lawrence, quote from The Complete Poems (Poetry Library)


“What is the knocking?
What is the knocking at the door in the night?
It is somebody who wants to do us harm.

No, no, it is the three strange angels. Admit them, admit them.”
― D.H. Lawrence, quote from The Complete Poems (Poetry Library)


“Delivered helpless and amazed
From the womb of the All, I am
waiting dazed
For memory to be erased.

Then I shall know the Elysium
That lies outside the monstrous womb
Of time from out of which I come.”
― D.H. Lawrence, quote from The Complete Poems (Poetry Library)


Gloire de Dijon

When she rises in the morning
I linger to watch her;
She spreads the bath-cloth underneath the window
And the sunbeams catch her
Glistening white on the shoulders,
While down her sides the mellow
Golden shadow glows as
She stoops to the sponge, and her swung breasts
Sway like full-blown yellow
Gloire de Dijon roses.

She drips herself with water, and her shoulders
Glisten as silver, they crumple up
Like wet and falling roses, and I listen
For the sluicing of their rain-dishevelled petals.
In the window full of sunlight
Concentrates her golden shadow
Fold on fold, until it glows as
Mellow as the glory roses.”
― D.H. Lawrence, quote from The Complete Poems (Poetry Library)



“So I lay on your breast for an obscure hour Feeling your fingers go Like a rhythmic breeze Over my hair, and tracing my brows, Till I knew you not from a little wind:  — I wonder now if God allows Us only one moment of his keys. If only then You could have unlocked the moon on the night, And I baptized myself in the light Of your love; we both have entered then the white Pure passion, and never again.”
― D.H. Lawrence, quote from The Complete Poems (Poetry Library)


“You are the call and I am the answer,
You are the wish, and I the fulfillment,
You are the night, and I the day.
What else? it is perfect enough.
It is perfectly complete,
You and I,
What more⎼?
Strange, how we suffer in spite of this!”
― D.H. Lawrence, quote from The Complete Poems (Poetry Library)


About the author

D.H. Lawrence
Born place: in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, England
Born date September 11, 1885
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“I think that sometimes people misinterpret understand and acceptance and make it into something that it isn't.”
― Jessica Sorensen, quote from The Redemption of Callie & Kayden


“Every one of Joel's important songs--including the happy ones--are ultimately about loneliness. And it's not 'clever lonely' (like Morrissey) or 'interesting lonely' (like Radiohead); it's 'lonely lonely,' like the way it feels when you're being hugged by someone and it somehow makes you sadder.”
― Chuck Klosterman, quote from Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto


“There is probably no better or more reliable measure of whether a woman has spent time in ugly duckling status at some point or all throughout her life than her inability to digest a sincere compliment. Although it could be a matter of modesty, or could be attributed to shyness- although too many serious wounds are carelessly written off as "nothing but shyness"- more often a compliment is stuttered around about because it sets up an automatic and unpleasant dialogue in the woman's mind.

If you say how lovely she is, or how beautiful her art is, or compliment anything else her soul took part in, inspired, or suffused, something in her mind says she is undeserving and you, the complimentor, are an idiot for thinking such a thing to begin with. Rather than understand that the beauty of her soul shines through when she is being herself, the woman changes the subject and effectively snatches nourishment away from the soul-self, which thrives on being acknowledged."

"I must admit, I sometimes find it useful in my practice to delineate the various typologies of personality as cats and hens and ducks and swans and so forth. If warranted, I might ask my client to assume for a moment that she is a swan who does not realzie it. Assume also for a moment that she has been brought up by or is currently surrounded by ducks.

There is nothing wrong with ducks, I assure them, or with swans. But ducks are ducks and swans are swans. Sometimes to make the point I have to move to other animal metaphors. I like to use mice. What if you were raised by the mice people? But what if you're, say, a swan. Swans and mice hate each other's food for the most part. They each think the other smells funny. They are not interested in spending time together, and if they did, one would be constantly harassing the other.

But what if you, being a swan, had to pretend you were a mouse? What if you had to pretend to be gray and furry and tiny? What you had no long snaky tail to carry in the air on tail-carrying day? What if wherever you went you tried to walk like a mouse, but you waddled instead? What if you tried to talk like a mouse, but insteade out came a honk every time? Wouldn't you be the most miserable creature in the world?

The answer is an inequivocal yes. So why, if this is all so and too true, do women keep trying to bend and fold themselves into shapes that are not theirs? I must say, from years of clinical observation of this problem, that most of the time it is not because of deep-seated masochism or a malignant dedication to self-destruction or anything of that nature. More often it is because the woman simply doesn't know any better. She is unmothered.”
― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, quote from Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype


“*You have learned well,* Dragon said. *But heed me, little one. You must guard the webs you weave that make dreams into flesh. Many beings will cherish those webs because they are spun out of magic that lives in the heart. But there will be others who will want to destroy that heart-magic before it can touch the world. Guard the webs . . . Weaver of Dreams.* Dragon’s breath came out in a long sigh . . . and then there was silence.”
― Anne Bishop, quote from Dreams Made Flesh


“Gli eventi chiave del passato non possono essere cambiati, ma le persone coinvolte si. Evanna mi aveva detto che se fosse tornata indietro e avesse ucciso Adolf Hitler, l'universo l'avrebbe rimpiazzato con qualcun'altro. Gli eventi fondamentali della seconda guerra mondiale si sarebbero verificati con le stesse modalità, scatenati però da una figura differente. [...]
Quindi non potevo modificare il corso della storia intorno a me, ma potevo togliermi di mezzo.”
― Darren Shan, quote from Sons of Destiny


Interesting books

In the Woods
(223.7K)
In the Woods
by Tana French
The Marriage Bargain
(99.8K)
The Marriage Bargain
by Jennifer Probst
The Name of the Star
(42.7K)
The Name of the Star
by Maureen Johnson
The Secret of the Old Clock
(52.1K)
Three Weeks With My Brother
(35.9K)
Three Weeks With My...
by Nicholas Sparks
Orphan Train
(293.7K)
Orphan Train
by Christina Baker Kline

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.