The influence of Persian literature in Western culture is historically significant. In order to avoid what E.G. Browne calls "an altogether inadequate judgment of the intellectual activity of that ingenious and talented people", many top calibre centers of academia throughout the world today from Berlin to Japan, have permanent programs for Persian studies for the literary heritage of Persia.
L.P. Elwell-Sutton, "distinguished professor" of Persian studies of The University of Edinburgh calls Persian poetry "one of the richest poetic literatures of the world". And Persian Studies professor Dick Davis of the Ohio State University states that relative to its scope, more of Persian literature has passed into the common stock of English proverbial expression and cliché than is true of literary works of any other language.
Read more about Persian Literature In Western Culture: Ancient Persian Literature, Edward Fitzgerald, Goethe, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nietzsche, Rumi and The Sufist Genre
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“The threadbare trees, so poor and thin,
They are no wealthier than I;
But with as brave a core within
They rear their boughs to the October sky.
Poor knights they are which bravely wait
The charge of Winter’s cavalry,
Keeping a simple Roman state,
Discumbered of their Persian luxury.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 1, ch. 1 (1962)