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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.

T. E. Lawrence

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T. E. Lawrence
Age: 46 †
Born: 1888
Born: August 16
Died: 1935
Died: May 19
Aircraft Pilot
Anthropologist
Archaeologist
Autobiographer
Castellologist
Diplomat
Military Officer
Military Personnel
Screenwriter
Spy
Thomas Edward Lawrence
Lawrence of Arabia
of Arabia Lawrence
John Hume Ross
T.E. Lawrence
Thomas Edward Shaw
Men
Land
Chose
Acknowledged
Upon
Owners
Assert
Free
Whoever
Owner
Fact
Hills
Barren
Family
Holding
Valley
Facts
Desert
Hill
Right
Quickly
Valleys
Clan
Would
Looked
Aggression
Clans

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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
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I've been and am absurdly over-estimated. There are no supermen and I'm quite ordinary, and will say so whatever the artistic results. In that point I'm one of the few people who tell the truth about myself.
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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.
T. E. Lawrence
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Do not try and 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 win it for them.
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Misery, anger, indignation, discomfort-those conditions produce literature. Contentment-never. So there you are.
T. E. Lawrence
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The beginning and ending of the secret of handling Arabs is unremitting study of them.
T. E. Lawrence
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The literature of disease is more interesting to me than all the healthy books.
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As long as the Arabs fight tribe against tribe, so long will they be a little people, a silly people, greedy, barbarous and cruel.
T. E. Lawrence
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He feared his maturity as it grew upon him with its ripe thought, its skill, its finished art yet which lacked the poetry of boyhood to make living a full end of life.
T. E. Lawrence
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Immorality, I know. Immortality, I cannot judge.
T. E. Lawrence
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Mankind has had ten-thousand years of experience at fighting and if we must fight, we have no excuse for not fighting well.
T. E. Lawrence
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If I could talk it like Dahoum, you would never be tired of listening to me.
T. E. Lawrence
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To me an unnecessary action, or shot, or casualty, was not only waste but sin.
T. E. Lawrence
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Dream your dreams with open eyes and make them come true.
T. E. Lawrence
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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.
T. E. Lawrence
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It is difficult to keep quiet when everything is being done wrong, but the less you lose your temper the greater your advantage. Also then you will not go mad yourself.
T. E. Lawrence
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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.
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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.
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Club Secretary: I say, Lawrence. You are a clown! Lawrence: We can't all be lion tamers.
T. E. Lawrence
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Isn't it true that the fault of birth rests somewhat on the child? I believe it's we who led our parents on to bear us, and it's our unborn children who make our flesh itch.
T. E. Lawrence