Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia

Начало книги

I do not pretend to have understood T. E. Lawrence fully, still less to be able to portray him; there is no brush fine enough to catch the subtleties of his mind, no aerial viewpoint high enough to bring into one picture the manifold of his character…. I am not a tractable person or much of a hero-worshipper, but I could have followed Lawrence over the edge of the world. I loved him for himself, and also because there seemed to be reborn in him all the lost friends of my youth…. If genius be, in Emerson’s phrase, “a stellar and undiminishable something,” whose origin is a mystery and whose essence cannot be defined, then he was the only man of genius I have ever known.—John Buchan (Lord Tweedsmuir),

     Pilgrim’s Way

          The will is free;

Strong is the soul, and wise and beautiful;

The seeds of godlike power are in us still;

Gods are we, bards, saints, heroes, if we will!

—Matthew Arnold,

Читать дальше →