50 quotes
Reason is Life's sole arbiter, the magic Laby'rinth's single clue:
Worlds lie above, beyond its ken; what crosses it can ne'er be true.
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)
Travellers like poets are mostly an angry race.
Of the gladest moments in human life, methinks is the departure upon a distant journey to unknown lands.
Conquer thyself, till thou hast done this, thou art but a slave; for it is almost as well to be subjected to another's appetite as to thine own.
Support a compatriot against a native, however the former may blunder or plunder.
Exploration of the Highlands of Brazil (1869)
He advocates suspension of judgment, with a proper suspicion of "Facts, the idlest of superstitions."
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)
Finally, although destructive to appearance, he is essentially reconstructive.
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)
All Faith is false, all Faith is true: Truth is the shattered mirror strown
In myriad bits; while each believes his little bit the whole to own.
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)
Is not man born with a love of change — an Englishman to be discontented — an Anglo-Indian to grumble?
Of the gladdest moments in human life, methinks is the departure upon a distant journey to unknown lands.
The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.
The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night (1885)
The dearest ambition of a slave is not liberty but to have a slave of his own.
The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night (1885)
Unknown, Incomprehensible, whate'er you choose to call it, call;
But leave it vague as airy space, dark in its darkness mystical.
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)
The Now, that indivisible point which studs the length of infinite line
Whose ends are nowhere, is thine all, the puny all thou callest thine.
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)
Could you believe it possible that through such a night as this they choose to sleep under those wadded cotton coverlets, and dread not instantaneous asphyxiation?
Now the last hookah has gone out, and the most restless of our servants has turned in.
They walked the water's vasty breadth of blue,
parting the restless billows on their way.
How melancholy a thing is success.
Ah! where shall weary man take sanctuary,
where live his little span of life secure?
and 'scape of Heav'n serene th' indignant storms
that launch their thunders at us earthen worms?
Indeed he knows not how to know who knows not also how to 'unknow.'
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)