T.E. Lawrence Quotes

I could write for hours on the lustfulness of moving Swiftly.

A thick headcloth forms a good protection against the sun, and if you wear a hat your best Arab friends will be ashamed of you in public.

That is your trick, your bit of filthy magic: invisibility, and the anaesthetic power to deaden my attention in your direction.

I have gotten over feeling badly. We would be eternally miserable if our errors worried us too much because as we push forward we will make plenty more.

The atomic bombs will surely shorten the war, and let us hope that they will effectively end war as a possibility in human affairs.

Everything that has value has its price. Nothing worth having is ever handed to you gratis.

The great home of the soul is the open road.

The world is a raving idiot, and no man can kill it: though I’ll do my best. But you’re right. We must rescue ourselves as best we can.

Sanity means the wholeness of the consciousness. And our society is only part conscious, like an idiot.

Away with all ideals. Let each individual act spontaneously from the forever incalculable prompting of the creative wellhead within him. There is no universal law.

I would rather sit still in a state of peace on a stone than ride in the motor-car of a multi-millionaire and feel the peacelessness of the multi-millionaire poisoning me.

For God’s sake, let us be men not monkeys minding machines or sitting with our tails curled while the machine amuses us, the radio or film or gramophone. Monkeys with a bland grin on our faces.

It's beautiful when you watch something good happen to somebody when it's well deserved.

It's autumn and everybody feels like a disembodied spirit then.

There is my favorite quote that I ever heard from her [Lori Petty],... 'Things can happen to you, but they don't have to happen to your soul.'

It takes a lot of energy and a lot of neurosis to write a novel. If you were really sensible, you'd do something else.

The longer incompetent people delay in doing what they're doing, we're always better off whenever incompetent people are delaying what they're going to do.

There is a maxim about the universe which I always tell my students: That which is not explicitly forbidden is guaranteed to occur.

The really important thing is learning how to sceptically question and rely on empirical evidence.

Religious leaders need to be held accountable for their ideas.

A truly open mind means forcing our imaginations to conform to the evidence of reality, and not vice versa.

States with high and rising tax burdens are more likely to suffer economic decline; those with low and falling tax burdens are more likely to enjoy strong economic growth.

With Westerns you have the landscape is important, and it's empty, and only you populate it. When you populate it, you can tell any kind story that Shakespeare told, you can tell in a Western.

Science owes more to the steam engine than the steam engine owes to science.

Bent metal is worse than bent wood and weight for weight is more flexible.

A gentleman has his eyes on all those present; he is tender toward the bashful, gentle toward the distant, and merciful toward the absent.

I'd ban all automobiles from the central part of the city. You see, the automobile was just a passing fad. It's got to go. It's got to go a long way from here.

I'm reading a book about Romaine Brooks, a wonderful painter from early in the last century.

And once you cross over into that world, no matter how strong you are, you have to pay the price.

Sorrow is implicit in love as gravitation is implicit in mass.

Life, the raw material, is only lived in potentia until the artist deploys it in his work.

The most important thing about winning is believing that you can win no matter who you are playing.

Show me a man who cannot bother to do little things and I'll show you a man who cannot be trusted to do big things.

Why on earth should I care whether people read me with their eyes or their ears?

I never know what I'm going to write next, and when I think I do I usually turn out to be mistaken.

Every year there's a few more things I'm not sure of. I've decided that a wide-ranging uncertainty is the mark of the true maturity of man.

You will be courteous to your elders who have explored to the point from which you may advance; and helpful to your juniors who will progress farther by reason of your labors.

Darwin was Wrong! Man's still an ape.

You do become more aware of your mortality as you get older. When you're little, you jump on any wild horse. Then you get a little bit older and realize how fragile life is, and you're more careful.

I'd like to direct at some point. But I don't know because 10 years ago I would have never imagined that I'd be here. So in 10 years from now, I might be running a rodeo.

Our only business is to love and delight ourselves in God.

It matters not to me what I do, or what I suffer, so long as I abide loveingly united to God's will - that is my whole business.

When you're in a dark place, and your light is going to run out before too long, you get on with things. It's a wonder to me how few people apply that same logic to their lives.

For how can a man stand, unless he have something sure under his feet. Can a man tread the unstable water all his life, and call that standing? Better give in and drown at once.

Freedom is a very great reality, but it means above all things, freedom from lies.

Knowledge is honestly everything. It's not just books and staying behind a desk and having a diploma. There's also traveling and knowledge about people, and what I do and scripts and books.

Some truths should perhaps be left unsaid. Some doors unopened. An angel once told me to let go of the ills I held too close, to let go of the flaws that shaped me.

I don't like forcing comedy and people just trying to do things just to find a funny beat all the time.

Without my family, I would be nothing.

Death is the only pure, beautiful conclusion of a great passion.