Misery, anger, indignation, discomfort-those conditions produce literature. Contentment-never. So there you are.
T. E. LawrenceRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the idea that many Semitic beliefs emphasize a rejection of materialism, promoting simplicity and renunciation of worldly things.
T. E. Lawrence highlights how the common thread among Semitic religions is a focus on the worthlessness of the material world. This emphasis often leads adherents to advocate for a lifestyle characterized by austerity and detachment from earthly possessions, suggesting that such an approach can limit intellectual and cultural exploration, particularly in challenging environments like deserts.
Themes
MaterialismRenunciationSimplicityWorthlessnessSemiteBelief
In practice
Example use cases
During a discussion on the values of different cultures, this quote can highlight the significance of renunciation in certain belief systems.
More from T. E. Lawrence
All quotes →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!
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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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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.
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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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