English novelist and poet and essayist whose work condemned industrial society and explored sexual relationships (1885-1930)

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Be still when you have nothing to say when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot.
But better die than live mechanically a life that is a repetition of repetitions.
But then peace, peace I am so mistrustful of it so much afraid that it means a sort of weakness and giving in.
For whereas the mind works in possibilities, the intuitions work in actualities, and what you intuitively desire, that is possible to you. Whereas what you mentally or "consciously" desire is nine times out of ten impossible; hitch your wagon to star, or you will just stay where you are.
How beautiful maleness is, if it finds its right expression.
hy doesn't the past decently bury itself, instead of sitting waiting to be admired by the present
I believe a man is born first unto himself-for the happy developing of himself, while the world is a nursery, and the pretty things are to be snatched for, and pleasant things tasted some people seem to exist thus right to the end. But most are born again on entering manhood then they are born to humanity, to a consciousness of all the laughing, and the never-ceasing murmur of pain and sorrow that comes from the terrible multitudes of brothers.
I have never seen a wild thing feel sorry for itself. A little bird will fall dead, frozen from a bough, without ever having felt sorry for itself.
I want to live my life so that my nights are not full of regrets.
It is a fine thing to establish one's own religion in one's heart, not to be dependent on tradition and second-hand ideals. Life will seem to you, later, not a lesser, but a greater thing.
Life is ours to be spent, not to be saved.
Love is the flower of life, and blossoms unexpectedly and without law, and must be plucked where it is found, and enjoyed for the brief hour of its duration.
One watches them on the seashore, all the people, and there is something pathetic, almost wistful in them, as if they wished their lives did not add up to this scaly nullity of possession, but as if they could not escape. It is a dragon that has devoured us all: these obscene, scaly houses, this insatiable struggle and desire to possess, to possess always and in spite of everything, this need to be an owner, lest one be owned. It is too hideous and nauseating. Owners and owned, they are like the two sides of a ghastly disease. One feels a sort of madness come over one, as if the world had become hell. But it is only superimposed: it is only a temporary disease. It can be cleaned away.
The great virtue in life is real courage that knows how to face facts and live beyond them.
The human soul needs actual beauty more than bread.
The mind can assert anything and pretend it has proved it. My beliefs I test on my body, on my intuitional consciousness, and when I get a response there, then I accept.
Try to find your deepest issue in every confusion, and abide by that.
We and the cosmos are one. The cosmos is a vast 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 gleaming nerve-centre 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... Now all this is literally true, as men knew in the great past and as they will know again.
We ought to dance with rapture that we might be alive - and part of the living, incarnate cosmos.

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