“But the act, called the sexual act, is not for the depositing of seed. It is for leaping off into the unknown, as from a cliff's edge, like Sappho into the sea.”
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D.H. Lawrence 131
English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary crit… 1885–1930Related quotes
“I challenge Destiny, yes, but I do not leap off cliffs.”
Source: Dying Earth (1950-1984), Cugel's Saga (1983), Chapter 1, section 2, "The Inn of Blue Lamps"
“Go to the edge of the cliff and jump off. Build your wings on the way down.”
Brown Daily Herald (24 March 1995)
Variant: Stand at the top of a cliff and jump off and build your wings on the way down.
Source: Fahrenheit 451
Variant: Some loves come unbidden like winds from the sea, and others grow from the seeds of friendship.
Source: Magician: Apprentice
Patterns of Sex, the Mating Urge and our Sexual Future (St. Martin's Press, London & New York, 1980, ISBN 0-312-59811-4, p 14.
Quoted in: Germaine Greer, "Better No Sex than Bad Sex," Sunday Times Review, (1984-01-13), p. 33. See also Private Eye, no. 581 (March 1984), pp. 22. The quotation appeared as a chapter heading in Greer's <i>Sex and Destiny</i> (Olympic Marketing, Cambridge and New York, 1984, ISBN 0-06091-250-2, p. 127.
“In the case of a writer like Musil writing is often a graceful act, like a silvery fish leaping.”
p 37
Wonderful, Wonderful Times (1990)
Source: The Bridge of San Luis Rey
“And bold Stesichorus and rash Sappho, who feared not Leucas but took the manly leap.”
Stesichorusque ferox saltusque ingressa viriles
non formidata temeraria Leucade Sappho.
iii, line 154
Silvae, Book V