God how I hate new countries: They are older than the old, more sophisticated, much more conceited, only young in a certain puerile vanity more like senility than anything.
D. H. LawrenceRead
the more i live, the more i realize what strange creatures human beings are. some of them might just as well have a hundred legs, like a centipede, or six, like a lobster. the human consistency and dignity one has been led to expect from one's fellow-man seem actually non-existent. one doubts if they exist to any startling degree even in oneself.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the complexity and unpredictability of human nature.
D. H. Lawrence's quote suggests that the more experiences one has in life, the more one becomes aware of the bizarre and inconsistent nature of humanity. It implies that the dignity and consistency we expect from our fellow humans often fall short, leading to a realization of our own flaws and the strange behaviors exhibited by people, which may not align with our ideals of humanity.
Themes
HumanityNatureInconsistencyExistencePerception
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be shared in a discussion about human behavior in psychology classes.
More from D. H. Lawrence
All quotes →A young man is afraid of his demon and puts his hand over the demon's mouth sometimes and speaks for him. And the things the young man says are very rarely poetry.
D. H. LawrenceRead
And besides, look at elder flowers and bluebells-they are a sign that pure creation takes place - even the butterfly. But humanity never gets beyond the caterpillar stage -it rots in the chrysalis, it never will have wings.It is anti-creation, like monkeys and baboons.
D. H. LawrenceRead
The Christian fear of the pagan outlook has damaged the whole consciousness of man.
D. H. LawrenceRead
The cosmos is a vast living 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 nerve center 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.
D. H. LawrenceRead
... he preferred his own madness, to the regular sanity. He rejoiced in his own madness, he was free. He did not want that old sanity of the world, which was become so repulsive. He rejoiced in the new-found world of his madness. It was so fresh and delicate and so satisfying.
D. H. LawrenceRead
Similar quotes
It is not that the meaning cannot be explained. But there are certain meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words.
Haruki MurakamiRead
Urging humans to be superhumans, on pain of death and torture, is the urging of terrible self-abasement at their repeated and inevitable failure to keep the rules.
Christopher HitchensRead
We may idealize freedom, but when it comes to our habits, we are completely enslaved.
Sogyal RinpocheRead
We can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness.
Daniel KahnemanRead
The fact is that liberty, in any true sense, is a concept that lies quite beyond the reach of the inferior man's mind. And no wonder, for genuine liberty demands of its votaries a quality he lacks completely, and that is courage. The man who loves it must be willing to fight for it; blood, said Jefferson, is its natural manure. Liberty means self-reliance, it means resolution, it means the capacity for doing without . . . the average man doesn't want to be free. He wants to be safe.
H. L. MenckenRead
What's left is palimpsest—one memory bleeding into another, overwriting it.
Natasha TretheweyRead