Abu Tammam

“السيف أصدق أنباء من الكتب at Arabic Wikisource”

“A victory at which Heaven threw wide its gates,which Earth put on new dress to celebrate:O battle of Amorium, from whichour hopes returned engorged with milk and honey,The Muslims hast thou fixed in the ascendant,pagans and pagandom fixed in decline!”

“The sword gives truer tidings than do scriptures;its edge is what tells zeal from vanity; White blades, not the black letters on the page — thesereveal misguided doubts for what they are.”

“If a man lingers too long at home, it showson his face—so travel and refresh it!People like the sun more, I know,for not shining upon them perpetually.”

“If poetry could be exhausted, then it would already have been soby the collected water in your cisterns, in past times.Rather, it is the rainfall of the mind: some cloudsmay vanish, only to be followed by more clouds.”