Misery, anger, indignation, discomfort-those conditions produce literature. Contentment-never. So there you are.
T. E. LawrenceRead
Arab civilizations had been of an abstract nature, moral and intellectual rather than applied; and their lack of public spirit made their excellent private qualities futile. They were fortunate in their epoch: Europe had fallen barbarous; and the memory of Greek and Latin learning was fading from men's minds.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the abstract nature of Arab civilization and its struggles contrasted with Europe's decline in learning.
T. E. Lawrence points out that Arab civilizations were characterized by their moral and intellectual achievements, yet failed to translate these into public engagement, rendering their private virtues ineffective. He suggests that during a time when Europe was experiencing a collapse in knowledge and cultural memory, the Arab world possessed a unique potential that was ultimately unfulfilled due to a lack of collective spirit.
Themes
Arab CivilizationPublic SpiritIntellectualMoralEuropean DeclineLearning
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of civic engagement, one might quote Lawrence to emphasize the need for private virtues to manifest in public life.
More from T. E. Lawrence
All quotes βAll 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!
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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.
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The common base of all the Semitic creeds, winners or losers, was the ever present idea of world-worthlessness. Their profound reaction from matter led them to preach bareness, renunciation, poverty; and the atmosphere of this invention stifled the minds of the desert pitilessly.
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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.
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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 forever in the shade, till I become a shade myself.
T. E. LawrenceRead
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