D. H. Lawrence Quotes

A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within. The essential causes of Rome’s decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars.

I became evil for no reason. I had no motive for my wickedness except wickedness itself. It was foul, and I loved it. I loved the self-destruction, I loved my fall, not the object for which I had fallen but my fall itself. My depraved soul leaped down from your firmament to ruin. I was seeking not to gain anything by shameful means, but shame for its own sake.

In the acceptance of depravity the sense of the past is most truly captured. What is a ruin but time easing itself of endurance? Corruption is the Age of Time.

The cradles of civilization are the putrid sinks of the world.

A civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, was above corruption so long as human beings were involved.

In our corruption we perceive beauties unrevealed to ancient times.

In the deserted harbour there is yet water that laps against the quays. In the dark and silent forest, there is a leaf that falls. Behind the polished panelling the white ant eats away the wood. Nothing is ever quiet, except for fools

Everything degenerates in the hands of man.

DEAL is a most villainous place. It is full of filthy-looking people.Great desolationof abomination has beengoing on here.

To accept civilization as it is practically means accepting decay.

Oh, what a vileness human beauty is; corroding, corrupting everything it touches.

The soul of man, when it gets fairly rotten, will bear you all sorts of poisonous toad-stools, and no eye can see whence came the seed thereof.

Man is a degeneration of what he was.

Civilization is a disease produced by the practice of building societies with rotten material.

We know we are falling from grace, millennium.

The nation's morals are like its teeth: the more decayed they are the more it hurts to touch them.

Civilization, let me tell you what it is. First the soldier, then the merchant, then the priest, then the lawyer. The merchant hires the soldier and priest to conquer the country for him. First the soldier, he is a murderer; then the priest, he is a liar; then the merchant, he is a thief; and they all bring in the lawyer to make their laws and defend their deeds, and there you have your civilization!

Some day a real rain will come and wash all the scum off the streets.

People make filthy things with the freedom they regained.

What sort of tree is there which will not, if neglected, grow crooked and unfruitful; what but Will, if rightly ordered, prove productive and bring its fruit to maturity? What strength of body is there which will not lose its vigor and fall to decay by laziness, nice usage, and debauchery?

Hee that falles into the durt, the longer he stayes there, the fowler he is.

If we lose the virile, manly qualities, and sink into a nation of mere hucksters, putting gain over national honor, and subordinating everything to mere ease of life, then we shall indeed reach a condition worse than that of the ancient civilizations in the years of their decay.

The greater the wealth the thicker will be the dirt.

Were the life of man prolonged, he would become such a proficient in villainy, that it would become necessary again to drown or to burn the world. Earth would become an hell; for future rewards when put off to a great distance, would cease to encourage, and future punishments to alarm.