The Art of Tetman Callis

“The Bedu were odd people. For an Englishman, sojourning with them was unsatisfactory unless he had patience wide and deep as the sea. They were absolute slaves of their appetite, with no stamina of mind, drunkards for coffee, milk or water, gluttons for stewed meat, shameless beggars of tobacco. They dreamed for weeks before and […]

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“Shepherds were a class apart. For the ordinary Arab the hearth was a university, about which their world passed and where they heard the best talk, the news of their tribe, its poems, histories, love tales, lawsuits and bargainings. By such constant sharing in the hearth councils they grew up masters of expression, dialecticians, orators, […]

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“Nine-tenths of tactics were certain enough to be teachable in schools; but the irrational tenth was like the kingfisher flashing across the pool, and in it lay the test of generals. It could be ensued only by instinct (sharpened by thought practising the stroke) until at the crisis it came naturally, a reflex.” – T. […]

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“War upon rebellion was messy and slow, like eating soup with a knife.” – T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“At last we camped, and when the camels were unloaded and driven out to pasture, I lay down under the rocks and rested. My body was very sore with headache and high fever, the accompaniments of a sharp attack of dysentery which had troubled me along the march and had laid me out twice that […]

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“Even in situations of poetry the French remained incorrigible prose-writers, seeing by the directly-thrown light of reason and understanding, not through the half-closed eye, mistily, by things’ essential radiance.” – T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Your good and my good, perhaps they are different, and either forced good or forced evil will make a people cry with pain. Does the ore admire the flame which transforms it?” – T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“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. Even the wells and trees had their masters, […]

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“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.” – T. E. Lawrence, Seven […]

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“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. Youth could win, but had not learned to keep: and was pitiably weak against age. We stammered that we had worked for a new heaven and […]

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“You, reading this, you’re here, alive, because your parents synced and you showed up. That’s it. Even if they planned for a child, it was still a raffle draw. A hand went in a bowl and picked you. The tree shook and a fruit fell down. If it pains you to read, then cry. It’s […]

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“I’m not the kind of guy who believes in hell, or in a god who imagines a lake of fire. I just can’t see it—you have a mind that’s wider than the sky and that is what you use it to picture? To me, that sounds too petty, too human, too undivine to be real. […]

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“There be three kinds of unhappy men: He that hath knowledge and teacheth not ; He that teacheth and liveth not thereafter; He that knoweth not and doth not enquire to understand.” – Sir Edward Coke, Commentary on Littleton Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“There is no knowledge (seemeth it at the first of never so little moment) but it will stand the diligent student in stead at one time or other.” – Sir Edward Coke, Commentary on Littleton Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Pedantry is a useless display of learning, or perhaps a display of useless learning—at any rate, the term involves the double idea of display or affectation and uselessness.” – John Marshall Gest, The Lawyer in Literature Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Now, if a man wants to have his estate properly settled, it is absolutely necessary for him to die. It is not enough for him to disappear, no matter for how long, if he neglects this simple preliminary. When he comes back unexpectedly, and makes himself generally disagreeable, his return to the scene of his […]

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“That every man must work out his own damnation, is not merely a profound theological dogma and a practical rule of life, but also a fundamental canon of literary art.” – John Marshall Gest, The Lawyer in Literature Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Poets should always study law, as [Sir Walter] Scott did, but if more of them did so, there would be less poetry written.” – John Marshall Gest, The Lawyer in Literature Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“The clergy live by our sins, the medical faculty by our diseases, and the law gentry by our misfortunes.” – Sir Walter Scott, Antiquary Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Law’s like laudanum, it’s much more easy to use it as a quack does, than to learn to apply it like a physician.” – Sir Walter Scott, Guy Mannering Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Women play an important role in Judges, to an extent not seen in the Bible since the early chapters of Exodus. While they barely appear in Joshua, in Judges they are present in every major narrative save that of Ehud. And the way they are painted seems to act as a moral barometer for the […]

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“Ridicule is stronger than argument, caricature more powerful than a bald recital of sober facts.” – John Marshall Gest, The Lawyer in Literature Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“We are not very much to blame for our bad marriages. We live amid hallucinations, and this especial trap is laid to trip up our feet with and all are tripped up first or last.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Conduct of Life Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“When Daniel Quilp was found drowned, and the coroner’s jury found it a case of suicide, he was buried with a stake through his heart, in the centre of four lonely roads. This was a very old custom in England, but there seems to be no legal authority for it. Perhaps the place was so […]

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“The Family is an institution that’s allowed to be bigger and more important than the people it’s meant to protect. It’s meant to be everything, to everyone, all at once: a sanctuary, a home, a source of moral authority, a replacement for social infrastructure when the state fails. The harsher and more alienating the outside […]

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“Sex and drugs and violence are simple, but working through generational pain is the real grown-up shit.” – Laurie Penny, “ ‘Encanto’ is a Beautiful, Brilliant, Broken Mess.” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Who controls the questions controls the answers. Who controls the answers controls reality.” – Luciano Floridi, “The New Grey Power” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” – George Orwell, 1984 Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Only those who have allowed their own personality (and in particular their resentment, sadism, and hunger for power) to cloud their vision will fail to grasp the plain moral facts. One such plain moral fact is that it is better to be kind than to torture. Only such people will try to evade plain epistemological […]

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“We need to make a distinction between the claim that the world is out there and the claim that the truth is out there. To say that the world is out there, that it is not our creation, is to say, with common sense, that most things in space and time are the effects of […]

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