Томас Эдвард Лоуренс цитаты
Томас Эдвард Лоуренс
Дата рождения: 16. Август 1888
Дата смерти: 19. Май 1935
Томас Эдвард Лоуренс, или Лоуренс Аравийский , — британский офицер и путешественник, сыгравший большую роль в Великом арабском восстании 1916—1918 годов. Автор мемуаров «Семь столпов мудрости». Лоуренс считается военным героем как в Великобритании, так и в ряде арабских стран Ближнего Востока. Ему посвящён один из самых известных биографических фильмов в истории кино.
Цитаты Томас Эдвард Лоуренс
„Some of the evil of my tale may have been inherent in our circumstances.“
— T. E. Lawrence
Context: Some of the evil of my tale may have been inherent in our circumstances. For years we lived anyhow with one another in the naked desert, under the indifferent heaven. By day the hot sun fermented us; and we were dizzied by the beating wind. At night we were stained by dew, and shamed into pettiness by the innumerable silences of stars. We were a self-centred army without parade or gesture, devoted to freedom, the second of man's creeds, a purpose so ravenous that it devoured all our strength, a hope so transcendent that our earlier ambitions faded in its glare.
Ch. 1
„Do not try to do too much with your own hands.“
— T. E. Lawrence
Context: Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are to help them, not to win it for them. Actually, also, under the very odd conditions of Arabia, your practical work will not be as good as, perhaps, you think it is.
„Merit is no qualification for freedom.“
— T. E. Lawrence
Context: Whether they are fit for independence or not remains to be tried. Merit is no qualification for freedom. Bulgars, Afghans, and Tahitans have it. Freedom is enjoyed when you are so well armed, or so turbulent, or inhabit a country so thorny that the expense of your neighbour's occupying you is greater than the profit.
[http://www.telstudies.org/writings/letters/1919-20/200722_the_times.shtml "Letter to the Editor" The Times (22 July 1920)]
„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.“
— T. E. Lawrence
Context: 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. Besides, the tribesmen would then understand how to take me. The only wearers of khaki in their experience had been Turkish officers, before whom they took up an instinctive defence. If I wore Meccan clothes, they would behave to me as though I were really one of the leaders; and I might slip in and out of Feisal's tent without making a sensation which he had to explain away each time to strangers. I agreed at once, very gladly; for army uniform was abominable when camel-riding or when sitting about on the ground; and the Arab things, which I had learned to manage before the war, were cleaner and more decent in the desert.
Ch. 20
„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.“
— T. E. Lawrence
Context: 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. It can only be ensured by instinct, sharpened by thought practicing the stroke so often that at the crisis it is as natural as a reflex.
