“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.”

The quote "The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit Shall …" is famous quote attributed to Omar Khayyám (1048–1131), Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer.

The Rubaiyat (1120)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update April 18, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Omar Khayyám photo
Omar Khayyám 94
Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer 1048–1131

Related quotes

Edward FitzGerald photo

“Not a thing nor words, can ever compare to the smile of yours”

Ritsuko Okazaki (1959–2004) Japanese singer

笑顔にはかなわない(egao ni wa kanawanai), Life is Lovely
Lyrics

Francis Bacon photo

“It is not the pleasure of curiosity, nor the quiet of resolution, nor the raising of the spirit, nor victory of wit, nor faculty of speech … that are the true ends of knowledge … but it is a restitution and reinvesting, in great part, of man to the sovereignty and power, for whensoever he shall be able to call the creatures by their true names, he shall again command them.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

Valerius Terminus: Of the Interpretation of Nature (ca. 1603) Works, Vol. 1, p. 83; The Works of Francis Bacon (1819) p. 133, https://books.google.com/books?id=xgE9AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA133 Vol. 2

Richard Garnett photo

“Sweet are the words of Love, sweeter his thoughts:
Sweetest of all what Love nor says nor thinks.”

Richard Garnett (1835–1906) British scholar, librarian, biographer and poet

De Flagello myrteo. clxv.

Rousas John Rushdoony photo
Octavio Paz photo

“And in regard to the present matter, if the present matters: I do not belong to the masters. I don't wash my hands of it, but I am not a judge, nor a witness for the prosecution, nor an executioner. I do not torture, interrogate, or suffer interrogation.”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

The Clerk's Vision (1949)
Context: The world stretches out before me, the vast world of the big, the little, and the medium. Universe of kings and presidents and jailors, of mandarins and pariahs and liberators and liberated, of judges and witnesses and the condemned: stars of the first, second, third and nth magnitudes, planets, comets, bodies errant and eccentric or routine and domesticated by the laws of gravity, the subtle laws of falling, all keeping step, all turning slowly or rapidly around a void. Where they claim the central sun lies, the solar being, the hot beam made out of every human gaze, there is nothing but a hole and less than a hole: the eye of a dead fish, the giddy cavity of the eye that falls into itself and looks at itself without seeing. There is nothing with which to fill the hollow center of the whirlwind. The springs are smashed, the foundations collapsed, the visible or invisible bonds that joined one star to another, one body to another, one man to another, are nothing but a tangle of wires and thorns, a jungle of claws and teeth that twist us and chew us and spit us out and chew us again. No one hangs himself by the rope of a physical law. The equations fall tirelessly into themselves.
And in regard to the present matter, if the present matters: I do not belong to the masters. I don't wash my hands of it, but I am not a judge, nor a witness for the prosecution, nor an executioner. I do not torture, interrogate, or suffer interrogation. I do not loudly plead for leniency, nor wish to save myself or anyone else. And for all that I don't do and for all that they do to us, I neither ask forgiveness nor forgive. Their piety is as abject as their justice. Am I innocent? I'm guilty. Am I guilty? I'm innocent. (I'm innocent when I'm guilty, guilty when I'm innocent. I'm guilty when … but that is another song. Another song? It's all the same song.) Guilty innocent, innocent guilty, the fact is I quit.

William Morris photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Robert Southwell photo

“Not Solomon, for all his wit,
Nor Samson, though he were so strong,
No king nor person ever yet
Could 'scape, but Death laid him along.”

Robert Southwell (1561–1595) English Jesuit

Source: Upon the Image of Death, Line 37; p. 137.

Related topics