69 Quotes by T. E. Lawrence

Misery, anger, indignation, discomfort-those conditions produce literature. Contentment-never. So there you are.

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.

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.