Miriam Leivers Quotes

“You, you might marry, a man who would not pour himself out like fire before you.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“Isn't it beautiful?" she pleaded.
But he only scowled. He would rather have had it ugly just then.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“When I talk to you, I do not look at you, often, for, can you understand, I do not talk to your eyes, though they are dark and fine, nor to your ears, hidden under a graceful toss of silky hair - but to you away inside, beyond.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“And they went in silence along the road.
That same evening they were walking along under the trees by Nether Green. He was talking to her, fretfully, seemed to be struggling to convince himself.
"You know," he said, with an effort, "if one person loves, the other does."
"Ah!" she answered, "like mother said to me when I was little: 'Love begets love'."
"Yes - something like that - I think it must be."
"I hope so - because if it were not, love might be a very terrible thing," she said.
"Yes but it is - at least with most people," he answered.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“The crypt underneath the manor was beautiful and in perfect preservation. Paul made a drawing. Miriam stayed with him. She was thinking of Mary Queen of Scots looking with her strained hopeless eyes, that could not understand misery, over the hills where no help came, or sitting in this crypt being told of a God as cold as the place she sat in.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“Paul, walking alongside, laced his fingers in the strings of the bag Miriam was carrying... the meadow was bathed in a glory of sunshine, and the path was jewelled, and it was seldom that he gave her any sign. She held her fingers very still among the strings of the bag, his fingers touching.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“She searched earnestly in herself to see if she wanted Paul Morel. She felt there would be some disgrace in it. Full of twisted feeling, she was afraid she did want him. She stood selfconvicted. Then came an agony of new shame. She shrank within herself in a coil of torture. Did she want Paul Morel, and did he know she wanted him? What a subtle infamy upon her! She felt as if her whole soul coiled into knots of shame.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“He would not have it that they were lovers. The intimacy between them had been kept so abstract, such a matter of the soul, all thought and weary struggle into consciousness, that he saw it only as a Platonic friendship. He stoutly denied there was anything else between them. Miriam was silent, or else she very quietly agreed. He was a fool who did not know what was happening to himself.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“Come here, and let me pin them in for you."
He arranged them two or three at a time in the bosom of her dress, stepping back now and then to see the effect.
"You know," he said, taking the pin out of his mouth, "a woman ought always to arrange her flowers before her glass."
Miriam laughed. She thought flowers ought to be pinned in one's dress without any care. That Paul should take pains to fix her flowers for her was his whim.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“Their intimacy was so abstract, he did not know he wanted to crush her onto his breast to ease the ache there. He was afraid of her. The fact that he might want her as a man wants a woman had in him been suppressed into shame.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“There had come into his forehead a knitting of the brows which was becoming habitual with him, particularly when he was with Miriam. She longed to smooth it away, and she was afraid of it. It seemed the stamp of a man who was not her man in Paul Morel.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“If you put red berries in your hair," he said, "why would you look like some witch or priestess, and never like a reveller."
She laughed with a naked, painful sound.
"I don't know," she said.
His vigorous, warm hands were playing excitedly with the berries.
"Why can't you laugh?" he said. "You never laugh laughter. You only laugh when something is odd or incongruous, and then it almost seems to hurt you."
She bowed her head as if he was scolding her.
"I wish you could laugh at me for just one minute - just for a minute. I feel as if it would set something free."
"But!" - and she looked up at him with eyes frightened and struggling - "I do laugh at you - I do."
"Never! There's always a kind of intensity. When you laugh I could always cry, it seems as if it shows up your suffering.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“It's autumn," he said, "and everybody feels like a disembodied spirit then."
There was still another silence. This peculiar sadness between them thrilled her soul. He seemed so beautiful, with his eyes gone dark, and looking as if they were deep as the deepest well.
"You make me so spiritual!" he lamented. "And I don't want to be spiritual."
She took her finger from her mouth with a little pop, and looked up at him almost challenging. But still her soul was naked in her great dark eyes, and there was the same yearning appeal upon her. If he could have kissed her in abstract purity he would have done so. But he could not kiss her thus - and she seemed to leave no other way. And she yearned to him.
He gave a brief laugh.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“She loved to see his hands doing things... and busy at his work, he seemed to forget her. She loved him absorbedly. She wanted to run her hands down his sides. She always wanted to embrace him, so long as he did not want her...
She put her two hands on his sides, and ran them quickly down .
"You are so fine!" she said.
He laughed, hating her voice, but his blood roused to a wave of flame by her hands. She did not seem to realise him in all this. He might have been an object. She never realised the male he was.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“Don't talk any more," she pleaded softly, laying her hand on his forehead. He lay quite still, almost unable to move. His body was somewhere discarded.
"Why not - are you tired?"
"Yes, and it wears you out."
He laughed shortly, realising.
"Yet you always make me like it," he said.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“Miriam entered.
"All alone?" she said.
"Yes."
As if at home, she took off her tam o'shanter and her long coat, hanging them up. It gave him a thrill. This might be their own house, his and hers.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“Light, old boy?" said Beatrice, tilting her cigarette at him.
He bent forward to her to light his cigarette at hers. She was winking at him as he did so. Miriam saw his eyes trembling with mischief, and his full, almost sensual mouth quivering. He was not himself, and she could not bear it. As he was now, she had no connection with him, she might as well not have existed. She saw the cigarette dancing on his full red lips. She hated his thick hair for being tumbled loose on his forehead.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“Her dark eyes were naked with their love, afraid, and yearning. His eyes too were dark, and they hurt her. They seemed to master her.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“Suddenly he flung down the pencil, and was at the oven in a leap, turing the bread. For Miriam he was too quick. She started violently, and it hurt her with real pain. Even the way he crouched before the oven hurt her. There seemed to her something cruel in it, something cruel in the swift way he pitched the bread out of the. tins, caught it up again. If only he had been gentle in his movements, she would have felt so rich and warm. As it was, she was hurt.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“Now it was spring and there was a battle between him and Miriam. This year he had a good deal against her. She was vaguely aware of it. The old feeling that she would be a sacrifice to this love, which she had had when she prayed, was mingled in all her emotions. She did not at the bottom believe she ever would have him. She did not believe in herself, primarily: doubted whether she could ever be what he would demand of her. Certainly she never saw herself living happily through a life-time with him. She saw tragedy, sorrow, and sacrifice ahead. And in sacrifice she was proud, in renunciation she was strong; for she did not trust herself to support everyday life. She was prepared for the big things and deep things, like tragedy. It was the sufficiency of the small day-life she could not trust.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“Can you never like things without clutching them as if you wanted to pull the heart out of them? Why don't you have a bit more restraint or reserve or something?"
She looked up at him, full of pain, then continued slowly to stroke her lips against a ruffled flower. Their scent, as she smelled it, was so much kinder than he, it almost made her cry...
He scarcely knew what he was saying. These things came from him mechanically. She looked at him. His body seemed one weapon, firm and hard against her.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“What is it?" she pleaded softly.
He lay perfectly still, only his eyes alive, and they full of torment.
"You know," he said at length, rather wearily, "you know - we'd better break off."
I was what she dreaded. Swiftly, everything seemed to darken before her eyes.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“Do you think we love each other enough to marry?" he asked, definitely. It made her tremble.
"No," she answered, truthfully. "I don't think so - we're too young."
"I thought perhaps," he went on miserably, "that you, with your intensity in things, might have given more - than I could ever make up to you. - And even now - if you think it better - we'll be engaged."
Now Miriam wanted to cry. And she was angry too. He was always such a child, for people to do as they liked with.
"No, I don't think so," she said firmly.
He pondered a minute.
"You see," he said, "with me - I don't think one person would ever monopolise me - be everything to me - I think never."
This she did not consider...
"You stop away, will you?"
She did not answer. By this time she was very angry.
"Well, what shall we do?" she said shortly. "I suppose I'd better drop French. I was just beginning to get on with it. - But I suppose I can go alone."
"I don't see that we need," he said. "I can give you a French lesson, surely."
"Well - and there are Sunday nights. I shan't stop coming to chapel, because I enjoy it, and it's all the social life I get. But you've no need to come home with me. I can go alone."
"All right," he answered, rather taken aback... "And you won't think about it, and let it trouble you, will you?" he asked.
"Oh no," replied Miriam, without looking at him.
He was silent. She thought him unstable. He had no fixity of purpose, no anchor of righteousness that held him.
"Because," he continued, "a man gets across his bicycle - and goes to work - and does all sorts of things. But a woman broods."
"No, I shan't bother," said Miriam. And she meant it.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“Miriam sat in the rocking-chair, and did not speak. He hesitated, expecting her to rise and go with him to the barn as usual for his bicycle. She remained as she was. He was at a loss.
"Well - goodnight all!" he faltered.
She spoke her goodnight along with all the others. But as he went past the window, he looked in. She saw him pale, his brows knit slightly in a way that had become constant with him, his eyes dark with pain.
She rose and went to the doorway to wave goodbye to him as he passes through the gate. He rode slowly under the pine trees, feeling a cur and a miserable wretch. His bicycle went tilting down the hills at random. He thought it would be a relief to break one's neck.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“He turned the pages quickly, and read her a chapter of St. John. And he sat in the arm-chair, reading, intent, his voice only thinking, she felt as if he was using her unconsciously, as a man uses his tools at some work he is bent on. She loved it. And the wistfulness of his voice was like a reaching to something, and it was as if she were what he reached with. She sat back on the sofa, away from him, and yet feeling herself the very instrument his hand grasped. It gave her great pleasure.
Then he began to flater, and to get self-conscious. And when he came to the verse: "A woman, when she is in travail, hath sorrow because her hour is come," he missed it out. Miriam had felt him growing uncomfortable. She shrank when the well-known words did not follow. He went on reading, but she did not hear. A grief and shame made her bend her head.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“He said he did not like her. Yet he was keen to know about her. Well, he should put himself to the test. She believed that there were in him desired for higher things, and desires for lower, and that the desire for the higher would conquer. At any rate, he should try. She forget that her 'higher' and 'lower' were arbitrary.”
― D.H. Lawrence

“He kneeled one one knee, quickly gathering the best blossoms, moving from tuft to tuft restlessly, talking soft all the time. Miriam plucked the flowers lovingly, lingering over them. He always seemed to her too quick and almost scientific. Yet his bunches had a natural beauty more than hers. He loved them, but as if they were his and he had a right to them. She had more reverence for them: they held something she had not...
Clara was still wandering about disconsolately. Going towards her, he said:
"Why don't you get some?"
"I don't believe in it. They look better growing.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“Miriam had one beautiful evening with him in the hay... he talked to her of his hopes and despairs, and his whole soul seemed to lie bare before her. She felt as if she watched the very quivering stuff of life in him. The moon came out: they walked home together: he seemed to have come to her because he needed her so badly.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“She turned her back on him. Yet, everybody could see, that the only person she listened to, or was conscious of, was he, and he of her. It pleased the men to see this battle between them. But Miriam was tortured.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“Miriam read this letter twice, after which she sealed it up. A year later she broke the seal to show her mother the letter.
"You are a nun - you are a nun" - the words went into her heart again and again. Nothing he ever had said, had gone into her so deeply, fixedly, like a mortal wound.
She answered him two days after the party. "'Our intimacy would have been all beautiful, but for one little mistake,'" she quoted.
"Was the mistake mine?”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers