"My heart endured passion’s torment long before you; in such trials as these, you’re no match for my grit."

"A sword he is, though human; an entire world, though but a single man," Abū ʿAmr ʿUthmān ibn Ibrāhīm al-Nābulusī al-Miṣrī, The Sword of Ambition, translated by Luke B. Yarbrough

"It is as though you are in death’s throes your body about to depart. Sped to your appointed time after hopes false and deceptive." Ibn al-Sāʿī, Consorts of the Caliphs, translated by The Editors of the Library of Arabic Literature

"Dog days when the mirage melts and flows like water, when the ground's too hot for vipers, I'm out there with no cloth to protect me."

"I dressed in robes of night like a bride’s gown with four things that are one to the eye: A black ʿIlafian saddle, a sharp blade, a Mahrian mount, and an awe-inspiring hero." Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā l-Ṣūlī, The Life and Times of Abū Tammām, transl. by Beatrice Gruendler

"An apple wounded by her front teeth is tastier to me than the world and all that’s in it." Muḥammad ibn Maḥfūẓ al-Sanhūrī, Risible Rhymes, translated by Humphrey Davies

"Are those fallen stars or blossoms or strings of pearls like a flower? The singing of the nightingales sounds like music from the bower. Welcome to the spring, they say, but the spring will soon lose its power."

"The establishment of equality is what brings multiplicity into existence and preserves it in an ordered condition. Love spreads among people, their aims harmonize, their polities prosper,"

"For each delight, the world brings a grief To the pauper’s hut and the rich man’s gate; While those who study seek not to learn, But to vaunt, and vex their peers with vain debate,"

"Sound advice is sound even when it comes from an enemy, just as suffering is no less painful when inflicted by friends."

"I’d rather have a slab of rock for a pillow than sleep on a soft carpet in a land of ignominy." Ḥmēdān al-Shwēʿir, Arabian Satire, translated by Marcel Kurpershoek

"Don’t let a bad man make you sell your land. Bad men pass, land lasts." Al-Muḥassin ibn ʿAlī al-Tanūkhī, Stories of Piety and Prayer Deliverance Follows Adversity, translated by Julia Bray

"It is not for the like of me to dwell in this body, now it is so changed. The body is, after all, a mere receptacle for the soul; when the soul passes out of it, it returns in another receptacle."

"You will not be patient with me, so how can you endure things of which you have no experience?"

"A young man can know many homes in this world, yet his longing is always for the first of them."

"I am perturbed, I weep though weeping is neither useful nor beneficial, and I should rather weep for my weeping."

"Dhʿār, in the full year that has passed today my heart pined away and shriveled miserably, like a watercourse after a long period of drought: bone dry―even the bitter apples are desiccated." ʿAbdallāh ibn Sbayyil, Arabian Romantic, translated by Marcel Kurpershoek

"As we approached the city, I saw a vast expanse extending as far as the eye could see, so crowded with lights that it shone as bright as day." Ḥannā Diyāb, The Book of Travels, translated by Elias Muhanna

"Your cure is of yourself, and yet you’re unaware. Your malady’s of yourself, and yet you know it not. The whole world’s held within you, and still you claim you’re just a jot?"