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Edward FitzGerald (poet)
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Edward FitzGerald was an English writer, best known as the poet of the first and most famous English translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his translation of a selection of poems, originally written in Persian and of which there are about a thousand, attributed to Omar Khayyám , a Persian poet, mathematician and astronomer...

. The spelling of his name as both FitzGerald and Fitzgerald is seen. The use here of FitzGerald conforms with that of his own publications, anthologies such as Quiller-Couch
Arthur Quiller-Couch
Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch was a Cornish writer, who published under the pen name of Q. He is primarily remembered for the monumental Oxford Book Of English Verse 1250–1900 , and for his literary criticism...

's Oxford Book of English Verse, and most reference books up through about the 1960s.
Edward FitzGerald was born Edward Purcell at Bredfield House
Bredfield House
Bredfield House was situated in the village of Bredfield, around 2 miles north of Woodbridge, Suffolk, England...

 in Woodbridge
Woodbridge
Woodbridge is the name of various places around the world:In Australia:*Woodbridge, Western Australia formerly called West Midland.*Woodbridge, Tasmania.In Canada:*Woodbridge, OntarioIn the United Kingdom:*Woodbridge, Suffolk, the location of...

, Suffolk
Suffolk
Suffolk is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in East Anglia, England. It has borders with Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south. The North Sea lies to the east...

 in 1809.
Quotations

Leave well — even 'pretty well' — alone: that is what I learn as I get old.

As quoted in Fitzgerald to His Friends: Selected Letters of Edward FitzGerald (1979) edited by Alethea Hayter, p. 178

I am all for the short and merry life.

FitzGerald's epitaph, originally a statement in a letter to Frederick Tennyson|Frederick Tennyson (31 December 1850); Letters of Edward FitzGerald (1894), p. 261

Whether we wake or we sleep,Whether we carol or weep,The Sun with his Planets in chime,Marketh the going of Time.

Chronomoros. In Letters and Literary Remains of Edward FitzGerald (1889), pg. 461.

The King in a carriage may ride,And the Beggar may crawl at his side;But in the general race,They are traveling all the same pace.

Chronomoros. In Letters and Literary Remains of Edward FitzGerald (1889), pg. 461. :See Omar Khayyám, for more of these quatrains as translated by FitzGerald. These selections are from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam|Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Fifth edition (1889) unless otherwise noted. IX

Each Morn a thousand Roses brings, you say; Yes, but where leaves the Rose of Yesterday? XII

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread — and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness — Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough, A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse — and ThouBeside me singing in the Wilderness —And Wilderness is Paradise enow.

Some for the Glories of This World; and some Sigh for the Prophet's Paradise to come; Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go, Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum! LXXI

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. XCIX

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