T E Hulme Quotes

All national histories are partisan and designed to give us a good conceit of ourselves. ~ T. E. Hulme

A poem is good if it contains a new analogy and startles the reader out of the habit of treating words as counters. ~ T. E. Hulme

Here is the root of all romanticism: that man, the individual, is an infinite reservoir of possibilities, and if you can so rearrange society by the destruction of oppressive order, then these possibilities will have a chance, and you will get Progress. ~ T. E. Hulme

One of the main reasons for the existence of philosophy is not that it enables you to find truth (it can never do that) but that it does provide you a refuge for definitions. ~ T. E. Hulme

There is no such thing as an absolute truth to be discovered. ~ T. E. Hulme

In the light of absolute values (religious or ethical) man himself is judged to be limited or imperfect, while he can occasionally accomplish acts which partake of perfection, he, himself can never be perfect. ~ T. E. Hulme

Pure geometrical regularity gives a certain pleasure to men troubled by the obscurity of outside appearance. The geometrical line is something absolutely distinct from the messiness, the confusion, and the accidental details of existing things. ~ T. E. Hulme

Born with blue spectacles, you would think the world was blue and never be conscious of the existence of the distorting glass. ~ T. E. Hulme

Old houses were scaffolding once and workmen whistling. ~ T. E. Hulme

Thought is prior to language and consists in the simultaneous presentation to the mind of two different images. ~ T. E. Hulme

The view which regards man as a well, a reservoir full of possibilities, I call the romantic; the one which regards him as a very finite and fixed creature, I call the classical. ~ T. E. Hulme

Man is an extraordinarily fixed and limited animal whose nature is absolutely constant. It is only by tradition and organisation that anything decent can be got out of him. ~ T. E. Hulme

The first time I ever felt the necessity or inevitableness of verse, was in the desire to reproduce the peculiar quality of feeling which is induced by the flat spaces and wide horizons of the virgin prairie of western Canada. ~ T. E. Hulme

Literature, like memory, selects only the vivid patches. ~ T. E. Hulme

All conviction - and so, necessarily, conversion - is based on the motor and emotional aspects of the mind. ~ T. E. Hulme

The artist tries to see what there is to be interested in ... He has not created something,he has seen something. ~ T. E. Hulme

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. Lawrence

You wonder what I am doing? Well, so do I, in truth. Days seem to dawn, suns to shine, evenings to follow, and then I sleep. What I have done, what I am doing, what I am going to do, puzzle and bewilder me. Have you ever been a leaf and fallen from your tree in autumn and been really puzzled about it? That's the feeling.
(T.E. Lawrence to artist Eric Kennington, May 1935 ) ~ T.E. Lawrence

The Howeitat spread out along the cliffs to return the peasants' fire. This manner of going displeased Auda, the old lion, who raged that a mercenary village folk should dare to resist their secular masters, the Abu Tayi. So he jerked his halter, cantered his mare down the path, and rode out plain to view beneath the easternmost houses of the village. There he reined in, and shook a hand at them, booming in his wonderful voice: 'Dogs, do you not know Auda?' When they realized it was that implacable son of war their hearts failed them, and an hour later Sherif Nasir in the town-house was sipping tea with his guest the Turkish Governor, trying to console him for the sudden change of fortune. ~ T.E. Lawrence

Gazzy: Captain, like the captain of a ship. And then Terror, you know, T-E-R-O-R. ~ James Patterson

Not all things that are scary bite.
Not all things that are scary will bite you.
So take courage, you have teeth, too. ~ T.E. Antonino

Men have looked upon the desert as barren land, the free holding of whoever chose; but in fact each hill and valley in it had a man who was its acknowledged owner and would quickly assert the right of his family or clan to it, against aggression. ~ T.E. Lawrence

We offer our books to help you reason through some "egodly" quandaries; although quite frankly, our books are not good enough. They are not good enough because God relies on a human co-author for interpretation, and that of course equals imperfection. God deserves perfection. For that to be achieved Jesus Christ would need to be co-Author of the books; but Jesus Christ already wrote his/her perfect book by living a perfect life in a vastly inferior world to the one He/She (alterably twi-polar) normally claims – that Otherealm of Heaven. ~ T.E. Alford

A first difficulty of the Arab movement was to say who the Arabs were. Being a manufactured people, their name had been changing in sense slowly year by year. Once it meant an Arabian. There was a country called Arabia; but this was nothing to the point. ~ T.E. Lawrence

People want this to be an anomaly.... we can handle monsters, we can't handle our neighbors doing these things. we can't believe these are the same people we see at Christmas parties, and basketball games. ~ T. E. Carter

The literature of disease is more interesting to me than all the healthy books. ~ T.E. Lawrence

She doesn't believe it. She says it's a misunderstanding. That Caleb wouldn't... How does someone misunderstand find a body in a backyard? ~ T.E. Carter

T-E-A-M stands for together everyone achieves more. ~ Gary Busey

The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts. ~ T.E. Lawrence

To me an unnecessary action, or shot, or casualty, was not only waste but sin. ~ T.E. Lawrence

Opulence without elegance seems to be her motto. ~ T.E. Kinsey

T.E.A.M. = Together Everyone Achieves More. ~ Chuck Norris

Imagine (if you dare) a whimsical marriage of Lord Dunsany and S.J. Perelman, and you have something approaching the tales of Rhys Hughes, filled with gaudy colour, slapstick, puns, fantastic creatures, and the occasional unexpected chill. Hughes' world is a magical one - and his language if the most magical thing of all. ~ T.E.D. Klein

You gotta cut that shit out." Lassiter's voice harmonized with the sound of the toilet flushing. Which so made sense.
"Christ, don't you ever knock?"
"It's Lassiter. L-A-S-S-I-T-E-R. How is it possible you're still getting me confused with someone else? Do I need a nametag?"
"Yes, and let's put it over your mouth."

-Lassiter & Tohr ~ J.R. Ward

Life in mass was sensual only, to be lived and loved in its extremity. There could be no rest-houses for revolt, no dividend of joy paid out. Its spirit was accretive, to endure as far as the senses would endure, and to use each such advance as base for further adventure, deeper privation, sharper pain. Sense could not reach back or forward. A felt emotion was a conquered emotion, an experience gone dead, which we buried by expressing it. ~ T. E. Lawrence

S-A-T-O-R
A-R-E-P-O
T-E-N-E-T
O-P-E-R-A
R-O-T-A-S

The palindrome means something like "The farmer Arepo works with his plow," with rotas, literally "wheels," referring to the back-and-forth motion that plows make as they till. This "magic square" has delighted enigmatologists for centuries ... The magic square also reportedly kept away the devil, who traditionally (so said the church) got confused when he read palindromes. ~ Sam Kean

T h e C o n t e x t Anyone who wishes to master an activity must first understand its tools and rules ~ Anonymous

Who am I?" she snaps. "I am America, Israel, England! What am I doing?" She waits another long moment, her eyes shining. "I'm shutting up and listening." She draws the last word out so it hisses through the air. "I am the presidents, the kings, the prime ministers, the highs and the mighties - L-I-S-T-E-N!" She spells the word in the air. "The woman who made the baklava has something to say to you! Voilà! You see? Now what am I doing?" She picks up an imaginary plate, lifts something from it, and takes an invisible bite. Then she closes her eyes and says, "Mmm... That is such delicious Arabic-Jordanian-Lebanese-Palestinian baklawa. Thank you so much for sharing it with us! Please will you come to our home now and have some of our food?" She puts down the plate and brushes imaginary crumbs from her fingers. "So now what did I just do?
"You ate some baklawa?"
She curls her hand as if making a point so essential, it can be held only in the tips of the fingers. "I looked, I tasted, I spoke kindly and truthfully. I invited. You know what else? I keep doing it. I don't stop if it doesn't work on the first or the second or the third try. And like that!" She snaps the apron from the chair into the air, leaving a poof of flour like a wish. "There is your peace. ~ Diana Abu-Jaber

Everytime I say "sure" when I mean "no," everytime I smile brightly when I'm exploding with rage, every time I imagine my man's achievement is my own, I know the cheerleader never really died. I feel her shaking her ass inside me and I hear her breathless, girlish voice mutter "T-E-A-M, Yea, Team. ~ Louise Bernikow

A thick headcloth forms a good protection against the sun, and if you wear a hat your best Arab friends will be ashamed of you in public. ~ T.E. Lawrence

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

Club Secretary: I say, Lawrence. You are a clown! Lawrence: We can't all be lion tamers. ~ T.E. Lawrence

In the quiet between all the worry and all the things we fill our minds with, the world goes on. ~ T.E. Carter

In the absence of my beloved and much-derided crime board,' she said, 'I've been reduced to writing things in my journal like some sort of medieval peasant.' She ~ T E Kinsey

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

What name shall we give it which hath no name, the common eternal matter of the mind? If we were to call it essence, some might think it meant perfume, or gold, or honey. It is not even mind. It is not even discussible, groupable into words; it is not even endless, in fact it is not even mysterious or inscrutably inexplicable; it is what is; it is that; it is this. We could easily call the golden eternity "This." But "what's in a name?" asked Shakespeare. The golden eternity by another name would be as sweet. A Tathagata, a God, a Buddha by
another name, an Allah, a Sri Krishna, a Coyote, a Brahma, a Mazda, a Messiah, an Amida, an Aremedeia, a Maitreya, a Palalakonuh, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 would be as sweet. The golden eternity is X, the golden eternity is A, the golden eternity is /, the golden eternity is O, the golden eternity is [ ], the golden eternity is t-h-e-g-o-l-d-e-n-e-t-e-r-n-i-t-y. In the beginning was the word; before the beginning, in the beginningless infinite neverendingness, was the essence. Both the word "god" and the essence of the word, are emptiness. The form of emptiness which is emptiness having taken the form of form, is what you see and hear and feel right now, and what you taste and smell and think as you read this. Wait awhile, close your eyes, let your breathing stop three seconds or so, listen to the inside silence in the womb of the world, let your hands and nerve-ends drop, re-recognize the bliss you forgot, the emptiness and essence and ecstas ~ Jack Kerouac

This isn't a story of great romance or of true love. It's simply a story of being lonely and how comforting it is to be called beautiful. ~ T.E. Carter

'Dark Gods,' T. E. D. Klein's book of four novellas, felt like a godsend - even if it came from a deformed god, one that lurked beneath our sidewalks. ~ Victor LaValle

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. ~ T.E. Lawrence

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. ~ T.E. Lawrence

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

Winter broke the trees and now it's breaking all the people, too. ~ T.E. Carter

Horror, let's face it, is basically pretty dumb. You're writing about events that are preposterous, and the trick is to dress them up in language so compelling that the reader doesn't care. ~ T.E.D. Klein

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! ~ T.E. Lawrence

Your success will be proportioned to the amount of mental effort you devote to it. ~ T.E. Lawrence

The desert was held in a crazed communism by which Nature and the elements were for the free use of every known friendly person for his own purposes and no more. ~ T.E. Lawrence

shortly I should be able to live at peace in my cottage, with all the twenty four hours of the day to myself. Forty-six I am, and never yet had a whole week of leisure. What will 'for ever' feel like, and can I use it all? Please note its address from March onwards - Clouds Hill, Moreton, Dorset - and visit it, sometime, if you still stravage the roads of England in a great car. The cottage has two rooms; one, upstairs, for music (a gramophone and records) and one downstairs for books. There is a bath, in a demi-cupboard. For food one goes a mile, to Bovington (near the Tank Corps Depot) and at sleep-time I take my great sleeping bag, embroidered MEUM, and spread it on what seems the nicest bit of floor. There is a second bag, embroidered TUUM, for guests. The cottage looks simple, outside, and does no hurt to its setting which is twenty miles of broken heath and a river valley filled with rhododendrons run wild. I think everything, inside and outside my place, approaches perfection. ~ T.E. Lawrence

Always my soul hungered for less than it had ~ T.E. Lawrence

It was all a construct that Lawrence's biographers - at least those in the lionizing camp - have been more than willing to accept. Yet in doing so they have glided past one of the most important and fascinating riddles of T. E. Lawrence's life. How was it that a man less than four months in Arabia had come to so identify with the Arab cause that he was willing to betray the secrets of his own nation to assist it, to in effect transfer his allegiance from his homeland to a people he still barely knew? ~ Scott Anderson

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

Christ, don't you ever knock?
It's Lassiter. L-A-S-S-I-T-E-R. How is it possible you're still getting me confused with someone else? Do I need a nametag? ~ J.R. Ward

People should see what goes on. What it really feels like. Because once a trial starts and everyone's watching, both men will stand resolved and stoic. But if they could see this, if they could see what this kind of darkness does to a person, maybe they'd feel it, too. Maybe they wouldn't make excuses anymore. Maybe they wouldn't shrug it off, because, you know, these things happen. ~ T.E. Carter