30 quotes
As palace mirror'd in the stream, as vapour mingled with the skies,
So weaves the brain of mortal man the tangled web of Truth and Lies.
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)
How Thought is imp'otent to divine the secret which the gods defend,
The Why of birth and life and death, that Isis-veil no hand may rend.
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)
You pray, but hath your thought e'er weighed how empty vain the prayer must be,
That begs a boon already giv'en, or craves a change of law to see?
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)
Words, words that gender things!
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)
"'Tis blessed to believe"; you say: The saying may be true enow
And it can add to Life a light: — only remains to show us how.
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)
What is the Truth? was askt of yore. Reply all object Truth is one
As twain of halves aye makes a whole; the moral Truth for all is none.
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)
Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but self expect applause;
He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and keeps his self-made laws.
All other Life is living Death, a world where none but Phantoms dwell,
A breath, a wind, a sound, a voice, a tinkling of the camel-bell.
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)
What see we here? Forms, nothing more! Forms fill the brightest, strongest eye,
We know not substance; 'mid the shades shadows ourselves we live and die.
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)
"Be ye Good Boys, go seek for Heav'en, come pay the priest that holds the key;"
So spake, and speaks, and aye shall speak the last to enter Heaven, — he.
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)
With Hâjî Abdû the soul is not material, for that would be a contradiction of terms. He regards it, with many moderns, as a state of things, not a thing; a convenient word denoting the sense of personality, of individual identity.
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)