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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.

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
Trying
Arabia
Much
Perfectly
Winning
Help
War
Helping
Hands
Tolerably
Better
Arabs

More quotes by T. E. Lawrence

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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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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.
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
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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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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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I wrote my will across the sky, in stars
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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Half a calamity is better than a whole one.
T. E. Lawrence
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Cling tight to your sense of humour. You will need it every day.
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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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.
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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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.
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.
T. E. Lawrence
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Immorality, I know. Immortality, I cannot judge.
T. E. Lawrence
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The desert is an ocean in which no oar is dipped.
T. E. Lawrence
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The greatest commander is he whose intuitions most nearly happen.
T. E. Lawrence
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Your success will be proportioned to the amount of mental effort you devote to it.
T. E. Lawrence
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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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They taught me that no man could be their leader except he ate the ranks' food, wore their clothes, lived level with them, and yet appeared better in himself.
T. E. Lawrence