30 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)
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)
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)
Indeed he knows not how to know who knows not also how to 'unknow.'
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)
Cease, Man, to mourn, to weep, to wail; enjoy thy shining hour of sun;
We dance along Death's icy brink, but is the dance less full of fun?
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)
From none but self expect applause;
He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and keeps his self-made laws.
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)
Friends of my youth, a last adieu! haply some day we meet again;
Yet ne'er the self-same men shall meet; the years shall make us other men.
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)
There is no God, no man-made God; a bigger, stronger, crueller man;
Black phantom of our baby-fears, ere Thought, the life of Life, began.
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)
The Pilgrim holds with St. Augustine Absolute Evil is impossible because it is always rising up into good. He considers the theory of a beneficent or maleficent deity a purely sentimental fancy, contradicted by human reason and the aspect of the world.
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)
Man worships self: his God is Man; the struggling of the mortal mind
To form its model as 'twould be, the perfect of itself to find.
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)
What call ye them or Goods or Ills, ill-goods, good-ills, a loss, a gain,
When realms arise and falls a roof; a world is won, a man is slain?
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)
"Fools rush where Angels fear to tread!" Angels and Fools have equal claim
To do what Nature bids them do, sans hope of praise, sans fear of blame!
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)
How shall the Shown pretend to ken aught of the Showman or the Show?
Why meanly bargain to believe, which only means thou ne'er canst know?
How may the passing Now contain the standing Now — Eternity? —
An endless is without a was, the be and never the to-be?
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)
I am an individual … a circle touching and intersecting my neighbours at certain points, but nowhere corresponding, nowhere blending.
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)
And still the Weaver plies his loom, whose warp and woof is wretched Man
Weaving th' unpattern'd dark design, so dark we doubt it owns a plan.
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)
With God's foreknowledge man's free will! what monster-growth of human brain,
What powers of light shall ever pierce this puzzle dense with words inane?
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)
Hardly we find the path of love, to sink the self, forget the "I,"
When sad suspicion grips the heart, when Man, the Man begins to die
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)