T. E. Lawrence
T. E. Lawrence
Thomas Edward Lawrence CB DSO FASwas a British author, archaeologist, military officer, and diplomat. He was renowned for his liaison role during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign and the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. The breadth and variety of his activities and associations, and his ability to describe them vividly in writing, earned him international fame as Lawrence of Arabia—a title used for the 1962 film based on his wartime activities...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionSoldier
Date of Birth16 August 1888
Misery, anger, indignation, discomfort-those conditions produce literature. Contentment-never. So there you are.
Men have looked upon the desert as barren land, the free holding of whoever chose; but in fact each hill and valley in it had a man who was its acknowledged owner and would quickly assert the right of his family or clan to it, against aggression.
I haven't got a heart: only the former site of one, with a monument there to say that it has been removed and the area it occupied turned into a public garden, in pursuance of the slum-clearance scheme.
The Beduin could not look for God within him: he was too sure that he was within God.
It seems to me that the conquest of the air is the only major task for our generation.
Many men would take the death-sentence without a whimper, to escape the life-sentence which fate carries in her other hand.
Dream your dreams with open eyes and make them come true.
We lived always in the stretch or sag of nerves, either on the crest or in the trough of waves of feeling.
You wonder what I am doing? Well, so do I, in truth. Days seem to dawn, suns to shine, evenings to follow, and then I sleep. What I have done, what I am doing, what I am going to do, puzzle and bewilder me. Have you ever been a leaf and fallen from your tree in autumn and been really puzzled about it? That’s the feeling. (T.E. Lawrence to artist Eric Kennington, May 1935 )
We had been hopelessly labouring to plough waste lands; to make nationality grow in a place full of the certainty of God… Among the tribes our creed could be only like the desert grass – a beautiful swift seeming of spring; which, after a day’s heat, fell dusty.
If you wear Arab things, wear the best. Clothes are significant among the tribes, and you must wear the appropriate, and appear at ease in them. Dress like a Sherif, if they agree to it.
The beginning and ending of the secret of handling Arabs is unremitting study of them.
The Beduin of the desert, born and grown up in it, had embraced with all his sour this nakedness too harsh for volunteers, for the reason, felt but inarticulate, that there he found himself indubitably free.
I prefer lies to truth, especially when the lies are about me.