“One Flash of It within the Tavern caught Better than in the Temple lost outright.”

— Omar Khayyam, Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, trans. Edward FitzGerald (1889), LXXVII

About Omar Khayyam

1048 – 1131

Persian polymath and poet, whose quatrains were popularised in English by Edward FitzGerald.

“The Bird of Time has but a little way to fly—and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.”

“Whoever thinks algebra is a trick in obtaining unknowns has thought it in vain.”

“Ah, take the Cash in hand and wave the Rest; Oh, the brave Music of a distant Drum!”

“Death, like generation, is a secret of Nature.”

“If we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future.”

“No hour of life is lost that is spent in the saddle.”

“A witticism is an epigram on the death of a feeling.”

“Accepting the absurdity of everything around us is one step, a necessary experience: it should not become a dead end.”

“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes!”