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Quotes from Seven Pillars of Wisdom — T. E. Lawrence

1888–1935 Wales

← All quotes by T. E. Lawrence

11 quotes

Some of the evil of my tale may have been inherent in our circumstances.

Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922)

This creed of the desert seemed inexpressible in words, and indeed in thought.

Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922)

The Bedouin could not look for God within him: he was too sure that he was within God.

Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922)

All our subject provinces to me were not worth one dead Englishman.

Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922)

Feisal asked me if I would wear Arab clothes like his own while in the camp. I should find it better for my own part, since it was a comfortable dress in which to live Arab-fashion as we must do.

Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922)

Then rose up the horror which would make civilized man shun justice like a plague if he had not the needy to serve him as hangmen for wages.

Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922)

By them one saw vividly how great it was to be their kin, and English. And we were casting them by thousands into the fire to the worst of deaths, not to win the war but that the corn and rice and oil of Mesopotamia might be ours.

Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922)

Rebels, especially successful rebels, were of necessity bad subjects and worse governors.

Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922)

I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands
and wrote my will across the sky in stars
To gain you Freedom, the seven-pillared worthy house,
that your eyes might be shining for me
When I came.

Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922)

the sword also means clean-ness + death

Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922)

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. Logical outcomes were the reduction of this licence to privilege by the men of the desert, and their hardness to strangers unprovided with introduction or guarantee, since the common security lay in the common responsibility of kinsmen.

Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: T. E. Lawrence (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.