T.E. Lawrence Quotes

Quotes by and about T.E. Lawrence

(Continued from his main entry on the site.)

Lawrence: "[The affairs of other people are] not my business, and I cherish my own freedom to do as I like too much to dream of interfering."

Lawrence: "I have got ... to stay down here a fortnight longer, because things here are interesting, and new."

Lawrence: "[My] situation ... is full of surprise turns, and my finger is one of those helping to mix the pie."

Lawrence: "School ... was part nightmare and part nuisance."

Lawrence: "I always was an optimist."

Jeremy Wilson: "Lawrence was an acute observer of people, places, and events."

Jeremy Wilson: "Unlike some intellectuals, he also had strong practical gifts. He quickly rejected the idea of becoming a professional academic. He admired fine craftsmanship and derived creative satisfaction from manual work. While a student at Oxford he came to revere the fine printing of William Morris. This led to one of his lifelong ambitions - to run a fine press of his own."

Jeremy Wilson: "Few of his contemporaries combined both practical and intellectual achievements to the degree that Lawrence did."

Winston Churchill: "I deem him one of the greatest beings alive in our time. ... The world looks with some awe upon a man who appears unconcernedly indifferent to home, money, comfort, rank, or even power and fame. The world feels not without a certain apprehension, that here is someone outside its jurisdiction; someone before whom its allurements may be spread in vain; someone strangely enfranchised, untamed, untrammelled by convention, moving independent of the ordinary currents of human action."