T. E. Lawrence quotes - page 2

The difficulty is to keep oneself untouched in a crowd: so many people try to speak to you or touch you: and your like electricity, in that one touch discharges all the virtue you have stored up. (T. E. Lawrence)
Freedom is enjoyed when you are so well armed, or so turbulent, or inhabit a country so thorny that the expense of your neighbour's occupying you is greater than the profit. View quote
T. E. Lawrence
In the distant future, if the distant future deigns to consider my insignificance, I shall be appraised rather as a man of letters than a man of action. View quote
T. E. Lawrence
To explain the lure of speed you would have to explain human nature; but it is easier understood than explained. All men in all ages have beggared themselves for fast horses or camels or ships or cars or bikes or aeroplanes: all men have strained themselves dry to run or walk or swim faster. Speed is the second oldest animal craving in our nature, and our generation is fortunate in being able to indulge it more cheaply and generally than our ancestors. Every natural man cultivates the speed that appeals to him. I have a motorbike income. View quote
T. E. Lawrence
Do not try to do too much with your own hands. View quote
T. E. Lawrence
Merit is no qualification for freedom. View quote
T. E. Lawrence
Some of the evil of my tale may have been inherent in our circumstances. View quote
T. E. Lawrence
Feisal asked me if I would wear Arab clothes like his own while in the camp. I should find it better for my own part, since it was a comfortable dress in which to live Arab-fashion as we must do. View quote
T. E. Lawrence
It seemed that rebellion must have an unassailable base, something guarded not merely from attack, but from the fear of it. View quote
T. E. Lawrence
All our subject provinces to me were not worth one dead Englishman. View quote
T. E. Lawrence
By them one saw vividly how great it was to be their kin, and English. And we were casting them by thousands into the fire to the worst of deaths, not to win the war but that the corn and rice and oil of Mesopotamia might be ours. (T. E. Lawrence)
Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are to help them, not to win it for them. View quote
T. E. Lawrence
Some of the evil of my tale may have been inherent in our circumstances. For years we lived anyhow with one another in the naked desert, under the indifferent heaven. View quote
T. E. Lawrence
To me an unnecessary action, or shot, or casualty, was not only waste but sin. View quote
T. E. Lawrence
In the history of the world (cheap edition) I'm a sublimated Aladdin, the thousand and second Knight, a Strand-Magazine strummer. In the eyes of «those who know» I failed badly in attempting a piece of work which a little more resolution would have pushed through, or left un-touched. View quote
T. E. Lawrence
If you do do it, please hold me as a model, and not as 'the most romantic figure of the war . I'm tired of the lime light, and am really not stagy at all, and not ever going to be a public figure again. It was a war effort, imposed, involuntary. Don't do me as Colonel Lawrence (he died Nov. 11. 1918). View quote
T. E. Lawrence
I deem him one of the greatest beings alive in our time... We shall never see his like again. His name will live in history. It will live in the annals of war... It will live in the legends of Arabia. View quote
T. E. Lawrence
Lawrence was one of those beings whose pace of life was faster and more intense than what is normal. He was not in complete harmony with the normal. The fury of the Great War raised the pitch of life to the Lawrence standard. I have often wondered what would have happened to Lawrence if the Great War had continued for several more years. The earth trembled with the wrath of the warring nations. Everything was in motion. No one could say what was impossible. Lawrence might have realised Napoleon's young dream of conquering the East; he might have arrived in Constantinople in 1919 or 1920 with most of the tribes and races of Asia Minor and Arabia at his back. But the storm wind ceased as suddenly as it had arisen. The skies were clear; the bells of Armistice rang out. Mankind returned with indescribable relief to its long interrupted, fondly cherished ordinary life, and Lawrence was left once more moving alone on a different plane and at a different speed. View quote
T. E. Lawrence
I always felt that Lawrence was an example of the triumph of mind over matter. His physique was almost puny, yet he drove his body by sheer will-power to feats of endurance which other more powerful men physically could not emulate. View quote
T. E. Lawrence
Lawrence was the appropriate hero for his class and epoch. View quote
T. E. Lawrence
One day in 1926 I met him at the gate of the British Museum in his private is uniform. «Hullo, Lawrence.» «Do you recognize me?» «Of course.» Then he said, «The whole afternoon i have been walking about the Museum where every attendant used to know me, and not a single one recognized me, till I inquired about someone I missed. Then the man knew me.» Quise so - what was the good of disguising if no one recognized him? (T. E. Lawrence)
Nine-tenths of tactics are certain, and taught in books: but the irrational tenth is like the kingfisher flashing across the pool, and that is the test of generals. It can only be ensured by instinct, sharpened by thought practicing the stroke so often that at the crisis it is as natural as a reflex. View quote
T. E. Lawrence