Omar Khayyam Quotes

Facts are many, but the truth is one.

Every closed eye is not sleeping, and every open eye is not seeing.

In truth, opinion may be taken for understanding; understanding cannot be taken for opinion. How so? Surely because opinion may be deceived; understanding cannot be. If it could, it would not be understanding but opinion. For true understanding has not only certain truth, but the knowledge of truth.

Jesters do often prove prophets.

Seeing through is rarely seeing into.

A smart man only believes half of what he hears, a wise man knows which half.

The first point of wisdom is to discern that which is false; the second, to know that which is true.

I am always looking for that nuance, that moment of truth, and you can't really do that fast.

Your perceptions are often far more accurate than you are willing to believe.

The truth cannot be deceptive, and one who sees it cannot be deceived.

I can tell very quickly when people are lying.

They who imagine truth in untruth and see untruth in truth will never arrive at the truth.

Appearances to the mind are of four kinds. Things either are what they appear to be; or they neither are, nor appear to be; or they are, and do not appear to be; or they are not, and yet appear to be. Rightly to aim in all these cases is the wise man's task.

The vulgar herd catches at the gross apparent fact, but the man of insight knows what lies on the surfaces does lie.

Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are.

What men call knowledge, is the reasoned acceptance of false appearances. Wisdom looks behind the veil and sees.

A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding.

They consider me to have sharp and penetrating vision because I see them through the mesh of a sieve.

Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.

The theater itself is a lie. Its deaths are mere special effects. Its tales never happened. Even the histories are distorted for dramatic effect. The theater is unnatural, a place of imagination. But the theater tells the audience something true: that the world requires judgments.

A discerning eye needs only a hint, and understatement leaves the imagination free to build its own elaborations.

In many cases it is a matter for decision and not a simple matter of fact whether x understands y; and so on.

Reality seems so simple. We just open our eyes and there it is. But that doesn't mean it is simple.

I've been blessed with a good head on my shoulders and quite a good ability of discernment. I can see through people.

Too much and too little wine. Give him none, he cannot find truth; give him too much, the same.