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The Rainbow QUOTES

The Rainbow QUOTES

1 " Was his life nothing? Had he nothing to show, no work? He did not count his work, anyone could have done it. What had he known, but the long, marital embrace with his wife. Curious, that this was what his life amounted to! At any rate, it was something, it was eternal. He would say so to anybody, and be proud of it. He lay with his wife in his arms, and she was still his fulfillment, just the same as ever. And that was the be-all and the end-all. Yes, and he was proud of it. "

― D.H. Lawrence , The Rainbow

2 " And she shrank away again, back into her darkness, and for a long while remained blotted safely away from living. "

― D.H. Lawrence , The Rainbow

3 " Why, oh why must one grow up, why must one inherit this heavy, numbing responsibility of living an undiscovered life? Out of the nothingness and the undifferentiated mass, to make something of herself! But what? In the obscurity and pathlessness to take a direction! But whither? How take even one step? And yet, how stand still? This was torment indeed, to inherit the responsibility of one’s own life. "

― D.H. Lawrence , The Rainbow

4 " And yet - and yet - one's kite will rise on the wind as far as ever one has string to let it go. It tugs and tugs and will go, and one is glad the further it goes, even if everybody else is nasty about it. "

― D.H. Lawrence , The Rainbow

5 " She turned, and saw a great white moon looking at her over the hill. And her breast opened to it, she was cleaved like a transparent jewel to its light. She stood filled with the full moon, offering herself. Her two breasts opened to make way for it, her body opened wide like a quivering anemone, a soft, dilated invitation touched by the moon. "

― D.H. Lawrence , The Rainbow

6 " The last year of her college career was wheeling slowly round. She could see ahead her examination and her departure. She had the ash of disillusion gritting under her teeth. Would the next move turn out the same? Always the shining doorway ahead; and then, upon approach, always the shining doorway was a gate into another ugly yard, dirty and active and dead. Always the crest of the hill gleaming ahead under heaven: and then, from the top of the hill only another sordid valley full of amorphous, squalid activity. "

― D.H. Lawrence , The Rainbow

7 " If I were the moon, I know where I would fall down. "

― D.H. Lawrence , The Rainbow

8 " He felt he had lost it for good, he knew what it was to have been in communication with her, and to be cast off again. In misery, his heart like a heavy stone, he went about unliving. "

― D.H. Lawrence , The Rainbow

9 " He worked very hard, till nothing lived in him but his eyes. "

― D.H. Lawrence , The Rainbow

10 " Their words were only accidents in the mutual silence. "

― D.H. Lawrence , The Rainbow

11 " But Anna was not to be won over. She had a curious shrinking from commonplace people, and particularly from the young lady of her day. She would not go into company because of the ill-at-ease feeling other people brought upon her. And she never could decide whether it were her fault or theirs. She half respected these other people, and continuous disillusion maddened her. She wanted to respect them. Still she thought the people she did not know were wonderful. Those she knew seemed always to be limiting her, tying her up in little falsities that irritated her beyond bearing. She would rather stay at home and avoid the rest of the world, leaving it illusory. "

― D.H. Lawrence , The Rainbow

12 " But having more freedom she only became more profoundly aware of the big want. She wanted so many things. She wanted to read great, beautiful books, and be rich with them; she wanted to see beautiful things, and have the joy of them for ever; she wanted to know big, free people; and there remained always the want she could put no name to?
It was so difficult. There were so many things, so much to meet and surpass. And one never knew where one was going. "

― D.H. Lawrence , The Rainbow

13 " She looked at him, and oh, the weariness to her, of the
effort to understand another language, the weariness of hearing
him, attending to him, making out who he was, as he stood there
fair-bearded and alien, looking at her. She knew something of
him, of his eyes. But she could not grasp him. She closed her
eyes. "

― D.H. Lawrence , The Rainbow

14 " Till gradually he became desperate, lost his understanding, was plunged in a revolt that knew no bounds. Inarticulate, he moved with her at the Marsh in violent, gloomy, wordless passion, almost in hatred of her. "

― D.H. Lawrence , The Rainbow

15 " ...a temple was never perfectly a temple, till it was ruined and mixed up with the winds and the sky and the herbs. "

― D.H. Lawrence , The Rainbow

16 " ...she was walking along the bottom-most bed--she was quite safe: quite safe, if she had to go on and on for ever, seeing this was the very bottom, and there was nothing deeper. There was nothing deeper, you see, so one could not but feel certain, passive. "

― D.H. Lawrence , The Rainbow

17 " In the superficial activity of her life, she was all English. She even thought in English. But her long blanks and darkness of abstraction were Polish. "

― D.H. Lawrence , The Rainbow

18 " They were mere permutations of known quantities. There was no roundness or fullness in this world he now inhabited, everything was a dead shape mental arrangement, without life or being. "

― D.H. Lawrence , The Rainbow

19 " As if I were any man's idea! As if I exist because a man has an idea of me! As if I will be betrayed by him, lend him my body as an instrument for his idea, to be a mere apparatus of his dead theory. But they are too fussy to be able to act; they are all impotent, they can't take a woman. They come to their own idea every time, and take that. They are like serpents trying to swallow themselves because they are hungry. "

― D.H. Lawrence , The Rainbow

20 " In his dark eyes was a deep misery which he wore with the same ease and pleasantness as he wore his close-sitting clothes. "

― D.H. Lawrence , The Rainbow