“Wake! For the Sun, who scatter'd into flightThe Stars before him from the Field of Night,Drives Night along with them from Heav'n,and strikesThe Sultan's Turret with a Shaft of Light”

“Wake! For the Sun, who scatter'd into flightThe Stars before him from the Field of Night,Drives Night along with them from Heav'n,and strikesThe Sultan's Turret with a Shaft of Light”

“They say that Caliph Omar, when consulted about what had to be done with the library of Alexandria, answered as follows: 'If the books of this library contain matters opposed to the Koran, they are bad and must be burned. If they contain only the doctrine of the Koran, burn them anyway, for they are superfluous.' Our learned men have cited this reasoning as the height of absurdity. However, suppose Gregory the Great was there instead of Omar and the Gospel instead of the Koran. The library would still have been burned, and that might well have been the finest moment in the life of this illustrious pontiff.”

“If you have a problem with me, it is OK, because Mullah Omar does too.”

“The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop, The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one.”

“Were it not Folly, Spider-like to spinThe Thread of present Life away to win-What? for ourselves, who know not if we shallBreathe out the very Breath we now breathe in!”

“Now the New Year reviving old Desires,The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires.”

“Oh threats of Hell and Hopes of Par”

“It is a shame for anyoneto be well-known for righteousness.It is a great disgrace to feeldistress at the injustice of the turning of the wheels of fate.”

“Every particle of dust on a patch of earthWas a sun-cheek or brow of the morning star;Shake the dust off your sleeve carefully--That too was a delicate, fair face.”

“Wake! For the Sun, who scatter'd into flightThe Stars before him from the Field of Night,Drives Night along with them from Heav'n,and strikesThe Sultan's Turret with a Shaft of Light”

“Inscribed on it was a verse from the Quatrains of Omar Khayyam, the eleventh-century Persian mystic. Reading the words aloud I prepared for a most amazing journey:The sages who have compassed sea and land,Their secret to search out and understand,My mind misgives me if they ever solveThe scheme on which the universe is planned.”