The vicarious policemanship which was the strongest emotion of Englishmen towards another man's muddle, in their case was replaced by the instinct to… - T.E. Lawrence

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 the stars. We were a self-centered army without parade or gesture, devoted to freedom, the second of man’s creeds, a purpose so ravenouse that it devoured all our strength, a hope so transcendent that our earlier ambitions faded in its glare.

The essence of the desert was the lonely moving individual, the son of the road, apart from the world as in a grave.

I was unlike a soldier: hated soldiering.