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 f… - T.E. Lawrence

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.

Und was ich in dem Palmenhain an diesem Abend erfuhr, das wuchs in meiner Phantasie und breitete sich aus tausend Ästen und Zweigen, furchtbeladen und schattenspendend gleich jenen, unter denen ich halb zuhörend, halb träumend saß, während die Dämmerung wuchs und die Nacht.

I had read the usual books (too many books), Clausewitz and Jomini, Mahan and Foch, had played at Napoleon’s campaigns, worked at Hannibal’s tactics, and the wars of Belisarius, like any other man at Oxford; but I had never thought myself into the mind of a real commander compelled to fight a campaign of his own.