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If poetry could be exhausted, then it would already have been so
by the collected water in your cisterns, in past times.
Rather, it is the rainfall of the mind: some clouds
may vanish, only to be followed by more clouds.

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More quotes by Abu Tammam

If a man lingers too long at home, it shows
on his face—so travel and refresh it!
People like the sun more, I know,
for not shining upon them perpetually.

The Life and Times of Abu Tammam (2015)

The sword is more truthful than books,
its edge marks the divide between earnestness and jest.

The sword gives truer tidings than do scriptures;
its edge is what tells zeal from vanity;
White blades, not the black letters on the page — these
reveal misguided doubts for what they are.

A victory at which Heaven threw wide its gates,
which Earth put on new dress to celebrate:
O battle of Amorium, from which
our hopes returned engorged with milk and honey,
The Muslims hast thou fixed in the ascendant,
pagans and pagandom fixed in decline!

All Abu Tammam quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Abu Tammam (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.