Omar Khayyam Quotes

Man no longer lives in the beginning--he has lost the beginning. Now he finds he is in the middle, knowing neither the end nor the beginning, and yet knowing that he is in the middle, coming from the beginning and going towards the end. He sees that his life is determined by these two facets, of which he knows only that he does not know them

Did you know that there are no straight lines in the universe? Life doesn't travel in perfectly straight lines. It moves more like a winding river. More often than not, you can only see to the next bend, and only when you reach that next turn can you see more.

To be a man, to have been born without knowing it or wanting it, to be thrown into the ocean of existence, to be obliged to swim, to exist; to have an identity; to resist the pressure and shocks from the outside and the unforeseen and unforeseeable acts - one's own and those of others - which so often exceed one's capacities? And what is more, to endure one's own thoughts about all this: in a word, to be human.

Niall: We're tossed by the winds of fate. Once we end where they blow us, we make of ourselves that we will.

So he lived, not knowing and not seeing any chance of knowing what he was and for what purpose he had been placed in the word.

How accidental our existences are, really, and how full of influence by circumstance.

We are an episode between two oblivions.

Death have we hated, knowing not what it meant; Life we have loved, through green leaf and through sere, Though still the less we knew of its intent.

A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea.

Life is fits and starts, mostly fits.

Sometimes the wind blows you places you weren't expecting: sometimes it blows you away from those places, too.

But what matter whether I was born or not, have lived or not, am dead or merely dying. I shall go on doing as I have always done, not knowing what it is I do, nor who I am, nor where I am, nor if I am.

Anything can happen. The great banana peel of existence is always on the floor somewhere.

God put us here, on this carnival ride. We close our eyes never knowing where it'll take us next.

Wind is the loving Wooer of waters; Wind blends together Billows all-foaming. Spirit of man, Thou art like unto water! Fortune of man, Thou art like unto wind!

We are an intelligent species caught in an historical process. No generation which proceeded us knew what was going on, and there is no reason to assume that we know what's going on or that the generation which follows us will know what's going on. And what kind of trip is it anyway to insist on knowing what's going on?

You never know when you might be seeing someone for the last time.

And that's how things are. A day is like a whole life. You start out doing one thing, but end up doing something else, plan to run an errand, but never get there. . . . And at the end of your life, your whole existence has the same haphazard quality, too. Your whole life has the same shape as a single day.

All thoughts emit a throw of dice

His lifetime was less than a fraction of a second in infinity. Or maybe he did not even exist; maybe human beings, the planets, everything in Creation were a dream...an illusion. He smiled with humility when he remembered.

A man is like a novel: until the very last page you don't know how it will end. Otherwise it wouldn't be worth reading.

I mean, the radical contingency that is - that exists and the fact that I'm going into the streets and finding random strangers any given day - who's in these streets that day?

Knowing the importance of luck, you should be particularly suspicious when highly consistent patterns emerge from the comparison of successful and less successful firms. In the presence of randomness, regular patterns can only be mirages.

Facts are all accidents. They all might have been different. They all may become different. They all may collapse altogether.

We are born one time only, we can never start a new life equipped with the experience we've gained from the previous one. We leave childhood without knowing what youth is, we marry without knowing what it is to be married, and even when we enter old age, we don't know what it is we're heading for: the old are innocent children innocent of thier old age. In that sense, man's world is the planet of inexperience.