Your success will be proportioned to the amount of mental effort you devote to it.
This creed of the desert seemed inexpressible in words, and indeed in thought.
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.
Half a calamity is better than a whole one.
To have news value is to have a tin can tied to one’s tail.
Cling tight to your sense of humour. You will need it every day.
Mankind has had ten-thousand years of experience at fighting and if we must fight, we have no excuse for not fighting well.
Nine-tenths of tactics are certain, and taught in books: but the irrational tenth is like the kingfisher flashing across the pool, and that is the test of generals.
All the revision in the world will not save a bad first draft: for the architecture of the thing comes, or fails to come, in the first conception, and revision only affects the detail and ornament, alas!
An opinion can be argued with; a conviction is best shot. The logical end of a war of creeds is the final destruction of one, and Salammbo is the classical text-book instance.
The printing press is the greatest weapon in the armoury of the modern commander.
To me an unnecessary action, or shot, or casualty, was not only waste but sin.
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.
It seems to me that the conquest of the air is the only major task for our generation.
I prefer lies to truth, especially when the lies are about me.
Club Secretary: I say, Lawrence. You are a clown! Lawrence: We can’t all be lion tamers.
Many men would take the death-sentence without a whimper, to escape the life-sentence which fate carries in her other hand.
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.
Immorality, I know. Immortality, I cannot judge.
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.