Seven Pillars of Wisdom Quotes

“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake up in the day to find it was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”
― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph

“I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands/and wrote my will across the sky in stars”
― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph

“I loved you, so I drew these tides of
Men into my hands
And wrote my will across the
Sky and stars
To earn you freedom, the seven
Pillared worthy house,
That your eyes might be
Shining for me
When we came

Death seemed my servant on the
Road, 'til we were near
And saw you waiting:
When you smiled and in sorrowful
Envy he outran me
And took you apart:
Into his quietness

Love, the way-weary, groped to your body,
Our brief wage
Ours for the moment
Before Earth's soft hand explored your shape
And the blind
Worms grew fat upon
Your substance

Men prayed me that I set our work,
The inviolate house,
As a memory of you
But for fit monument I shattered it,
Unfinished: and now
The little things creep out to patch
Themselves hovels
In the marred shadow
Of your gift.”
― T. E. Lawrence, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom

“He was old and wise, which meant tired and disappointed...”
― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom

“We were fond together because of the sweep of open places, the taste of wide winds, the sunlight, and the hopes in which we worked. The morning freshness of the world-to-be intoxicated us. We were wrought up with ideas inexpressible and vaporous, but to be fought for. We lived many lives in those whirling campaigns, never sparing ourselves: yet when we achieved and the new world dawned, the old men came out again and took our victory to remake in the likeness of the former world they knew. Youth could win, but had not learned to keep, and was pitiably weak against age. We stammered that we had worked for a new heaven and a new earth, and they thanked us kindly and made their peace.”
― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph

“We lived always in the stretch or sag of nerves, either on the crest or in the trough of waves of feeling.”
― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph

“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.”
― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph

“The fringes of their deserts were strewn with broken faiths.”
― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph

“I had dropped one form and not taken on the other, and was become like Mohammed's coffin in our legend, with a resultant feeling of intense loneliness in life, and a contempt, not for other men, but for all they do.”
― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph

“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.”
― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph

“My will had gone and I feared to be alone, lest the winds of circumstance, or power, or lust, blow my empty soul away.”
― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom

“All men dream: but nor equally, Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.”
― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom

“We had been hopelessly labouring to plough waste lands; to make nationality grow in a place full of the certainty of God… Among the tribes our creed could be only like the desert grass – a beautiful swift seeming of spring; which, after a day’s heat, fell dusty.”
― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph

“In peace-armies discipline meant the hunt, not of an average but of an absolute; the hundred per cent standard in which the ninety-nine were played down to the level of the weakest man on parade…. The deeper the discipline, the lower was the individual excellence; also the more sure the performance. – T. E. Lawrence Seven Pillars of Wisdom”
― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph

“Half-way through the labour of an index to this book I recalled the practice of my ten years' study of history; and realized that I had never used the index of a book fit to read.”
― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph

“I spent hours apart by myself, taking stock of where I stood, mentally, on this my thirtieth birthday. It came to me queerly how, four years ago, I had meant to be a general and knighted, when thirty. Such temporal dignities were now in my grasp, only that my sense of falsity of the Arab position had cured me of crude ambition: while it left me craving for good repute among men. This craving made me profoundly suspect my truthfulness to myself. Only too good an actor could so impress his favorable opinion. Here were the Arabs believing me, Allenby and Clayton trusting me, my bodyguard dying for me: and I began to wonder if all established reputations were founded, like mine, on fraud.”
― T E Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom

“I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands and wrote my will across the sky in stars To earn you Freedom, the seven-pillared worthy house, that your eyes might be shining for me When we came.   Death seemed my servant on the road, till we were near and saw you waiting: When you smiled, and in sorrowful envy he outran  me and took you apart: Into his quietness.”
― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom

“To me an unnecessary action, or shot, or casualty, was not only waste but sin. I was unable to take the professional view that all successful actions were gains. Our rebels were not materials, like soldiers, but friends of ours, trusting our leadership. We were not in command nationally, but by invitation; and our men were volunteers, individuals, local men, relatives, so that a death was a personal sorrow to many in the army. Even from the purely military point of view the assault seemed to me a blunder.”
― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph

“We pay for these things too much in honour and in innocent lives.”
― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph

“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. As”
― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom / The Evolution of a Revolt

“We had deluded ourselves that perhaps peace might find the Arabs able, unhelped and untaught, to defend themselves with paper tools. Meanwhile we glozed our fraud by conducting their necessary war purely and cheaply. But now this gloss had gone from me. Chargeable against my conceit were the causeless, ineffectual deaths of Hesa. My will had gone and I feared to be alone, lest the winds of circumstance, or power, or lust, blow my empty soul away.”
― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph

“The moral freshness of the world-to-be intoxicated us. We were wrought up in ideas inexpressible and vaporous, but to be fought for. We lived many lives in those whirling campaigns, never sparing ourselves: yet when we achieved and the new world dawned, the old men came out again and took our victory to re-make in the likeness of the former world they knew. Youth could win, but had not learned to keep: and was pitiably weak against age. We stammered that we had worked for a new heaven and a new earth, and they thanked us kindly and made their peace.”
― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom

“Afterwards the greedy Howeitat saw more oryx in the distance and went after the beasts, who foolishly ran a little; then stood still and stared till the men were near, and, too late, ran away again. Their white shining bellies betrayed them; for, by the magnification of the mirage, they winked each move to us from afar.”
― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph

“All men dream: but nor equally, Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses oftheir minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.”
― Thomas Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom

“A weariness of the desert was the living always in company, each of the party hearing all that was said and seeing all that was done by the others day and night. Yet the craving for solitude seemed part of the delusion of self-sufficiency, a factitious making-rare of the person to enhance its strangeness in its own estimation. To have privacy, as Newcombe and I had, was ten thousand times more restful than the open life, but the work suffered by the creation of such a bar between the leaders and men. Among the Arabs there were no distinctions, traditional or natural, except the unconscious power given a famous sheikh by virtue of his accomplishment; and they taught me that no man could be their leader except he ate the ranks’ food, wore their clothes, lived level with them, and yet appeared better in himself.”
― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph

“We cut three telegraph wires, and fastened the free ends to the saddles of six riding-camels of the Howeitat. The astonished team struggled far into the eastern valleys with the growing weight of twanging, tangling wire and the bursting poles dragging after them. At last they could no longer move. So we cut them loose and rode laughing after the caravan.”
― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom [Illustrated with Working TOC]

“Some of the speed and secrecy of our victory, and its regularity, might perhaps be ascribed to this double endowment's offsetting and emphasizing the rare feature that from end to end of it there was nothing female in the Arab movement, but the camels.”
― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: With Maps, Photographs, Illustrations & Compendium Of Military Articles

“They were incorrigibly children of the idea, feckless and color-blind, for whom body and spirit were forever and inevitably opposed.
The Semitic mind was strange and dark full of depressions and exaltations, lacking in rule, but with more of ardor and more fertile in belief than any other in the world. They were people of starts, for whom the abstract was the strongest motive, the process of infinite courage and variety, and the end nothing. The were unstable as water, and like water would perhaps finally prevail.”
― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph

“There was among the tribes in the fighting zone a nervous enthusiasm common, I suppose, to all national risings, but strangely disquieting to one from a land so long delivered that national freedom had become like the water in our mouths, tasteless.”
― T.E.Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom

“that? When I am angry I pray God to swing our globe into the fiery sun, and prevent the sorrows of the not-yet-born: but when I am content, I want to lie for ever in the shade, till I become a shade myself.”
― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom [Illustrated]: Lawrence of Arabia’s Firsthand Account of the Arab Revolt and Guerrilla Warfare in World War One