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
It seems to me that the conquest of the air is the only major task for our generation.
The Beduin could not look for God within him: he was too sure that he was within God.
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 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.
Misery, anger, indignation, discomfort-those conditions produce literature. Contentment-never. So there you are.
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.
As long as the arabs fight tribe against tribe, so long will they be a little people, a silly people, greedy, barbarous and cruel.
Dream your dreams with open eyes and make them come true.
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 )
If I could talk it like Dahoum, you would never be tired of listening to me.
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.
The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor.
I've been & am absurdly over-estimated. There are no supermen & I'm quite ordinary, & will say so whatever the artistic results. In that point I'm one of the few people who tell the truth about myself.
Immorality, I know. Immortality, I cannot judge.