D. H. Lawrence - Art Quotes

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What one does in one's art, that is the breath of one's being. What one does in one's life, that is a bagatelle for the outsiders to fuss about.

D. H. Lawrence
We have lost the art of living, and in the most important science of all, the science of daily life, the science of behavior, we are complete ignoramuses. We have psychology instead.

D. H. Lawrence
The business of art is to reveal the relation between man and his environment.

D. H. Lawrence
Oh literature, oh the glorious Art, how it preys upon the marrow in our bones. It scoops the stuffing out of us, and chucks us aside.

D. H. Lawrence
Design, in art, is a recognition of the relation between various things, various elements in the creative flux. You can't invent a design. You recognize it, in the fourth dimension. That is, with your blood and your bones, as well as with your eyes.

D. H. Lawrence
Art- speech is the only truth. An artist is usually a damned liar but his art, if it be art, will tell you the truth of his day and that is all that matters. Away with eternal truth. The truth lives from day to day, and the marvelous Plato of yesterday is chiefly bosh today.

D. H. Lawrence
The essential function of art is moral. But a passionate, implicit morality, not didactic. A morality which changes the blood, rather than the mind.

D. H. Lawrence
I can't bear art that you can walk round and admire. A book should be either a bandit or a rebel or a man in the crowd.

D. H. Lawrence
Why has mankind had such a craving to be imposed upon? Why this lust after imposing creeds, imposing deeds, imposing buildings, imposing language, imposing works of art? The thing becomes an imposition and a weariness at last. Give us things that are alive and flexible, which won't last too long and become an obstruction and a weariness. Even Michelangelo becomes at last a lump and a burden and a bore. It is so hard to see past him.

D. H. Lawrence
Sunday night meant, in the dark, wintry, rainy Midlands... anywhere where two creatures might stand and squeeze together and spoon.... Spooning was a fine art, whereas kissing and cuddling are calf-processes.

D. H. Lawrence
Since obscenity is the truth of our passion today, it is the only stuff of art -- or almost the only stuff.

D. H. Lawrence