The 56+ T. E. Lawrence Quotes

If I Could Talk It Like Dahoum, You Would Never Be Tired Of Listening To Me.

I Had Dropped One Form And Not Taken On The Other, And Was Become Like Mohammed's Coffin In Our Legend, With A Resultant Feeling Of Intense Loneliness In Life, And A Contempt, Not For Other Men, But For All They Do.

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.

The Desert Was Held In A Crazed Communism By Which Nature And The Elements Were For The Free Use Of Every Known Friendly Person For His Own Purposes And No More.

It Seemed That Rebellion Must Have An Unassailable Base, Something Guarded Not Merely From Attack, But From The Fear Of It: Such A Base As We Had In The Red Sea Parts, The Desert, Or In The Minds Of The Men We Converted To Our Creed.

It Seems To Me That The Conquest Of The Air Is The Only Major Task For Our Generation.

I Could Write For Hours On The Lustfulness Of Moving Swiftly.

Suppose We Were (as We Might Be) An Influence, An Idea, A Thing Intangible, Invulnerable, Without Front Or Back, Drifting About Like A Gas? Armies Were Like Plants, Immobile, Firm-rooted, Nourished Through Long Stems To The Head. We Might Be A Vapour, Blowing Where We Listed Ours Should Be A War Of Detachment. We Were To Contain The Enemy By The Silent Threat Of A Vast, Unknown Desert

The Beginning And Ending Of The Secret Of Handling Arabs Is Unremitting Study Of Them.

In Peace-armies Discipline Meant The Hunt, Not Of An Average But Of An Absolute; The Hundred Per Cent Standard In Which The Ninety-nine Were Played Down To The Level Of The Weakest Man On Parade.... The Deeper The Discipline, The Lower Was The Individual Excellence; Also The More Sure The Performance.

A Thick Headcloth Forms A Good Protection Against The Sun, And If You Wear A Hat Your Best Arab Friends Will Be Ashamed Of You In Public.

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.