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• A Moment's Halt--a momentary taste Of BEING from the Well amid the Waste-- And, Lo!
  he phantom Caravan has reach'd The NOTHING it set out from....
• Heav'n but the Vision of fulfill'd Desire, And Hell the Shadow of a Soul on fire.
  -- Omar Khayyam (died c.1133) -- Rubaiyat, Stanza lxvii...
• I sometimes think that never blows so red The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled
  That every Hyacinth the Garden wears Dropt in her Lap from some once lovely Head....
• And when like her, O Saki, you shall pass Among the Guests Star-scatter'd on the Grass, And in your blissful errand reach the spot Where I made One--turn down an empty Glass.
  -- Omar Khayyam (died c.1133) -- Rubaiyat, Stanza ci...
• The Moving Finger writes; and having writ, Moves o
  or all your Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it....
• And this I know: whether the one True Light Kindle to Love, or Wrath-consume me quite, One Flash of It within the Tavern caught Better than in the Temple lost outright.
  -- Omar Khayyam (died c.1133) -- Rubaiyat, Stanza lxxvii...
• The Bird of Time has but a little way to fly ... and the bird is on the wing. -- Omar Khayyam
• They are fools that think that wealth or women or strong drink or even drugs can buy the most in effort out of the soul of a man.
  These things offer pale pleasures compared to that which is greatest of them all, that task which demands from him more than his utmost strength, that absorbs him, bone and sinew and brain and hope and fear and dreams -- and still calls for more....
• And that inverted Bowl they call the Sky, Whereunder crawling coop'd we live and die, Lift not your hands to It for help - for It As impotently rolls as you or I.
  -- Omar Khayyam/Edward Fitzgerald, The Rubaiya...