Sex is our deepest form of consciousness. It is utterly non-ideal, non-mental. It is pure blood-consciousness.... It is the consciousness of the night, when the soul is almost asleep.

The Brangwens had lived for generations on the Marsh Farm, in the meadows where the Erewash twisted sluggishly through alder trees, separating Derbyshire from Nottinghamshire.

I don't like your miserable lonely single front name. It is so limited, so meager; it has no versatility; it is weighted down with the sense of responsibility; it is worn threadbare with much use; it is as bad as having only one jacket and one hat; it is like having only one relation, one blood relation, in the world. Never set a child afloat on the flat sea of life with only one sail to catch the wind.

Don't be on the side of the angels, it's too lowering.

To the Puritan all things are impure, as somebody says.

They wanted genuine intimacy, but they could not get even normally near to anyone, because they scorned to take the first steps, they scorned the triviality which forms common human intercourse.

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.