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Who really said it

This too shall pass

Not the Bible — a Persian Sufi fable Attar of Nishapur c. 1145 – c. 1221 · Persian Sufi poet who recorded the fable
Disputed Free to reuse

There is no such verse — the words appear nowhere in scripture. The saying is a Persian adage, carried in the fable of a king who asks his wise men for a motto that will hold true in prosperity and in ruin alike; Wikipedia’s survey places that ring story in the 12th-century Persian poets Sanai and Attar of Nishapur, and Jewish folklore retells it with Solomon as the sage. The English wording that actually got written down is not “this too shall pass” but “this also shall pass away” — the form Walter Scott used in a letter to Lord Byron on 6 November 1813 and Edward FitzGerald printed in 1852.

Last verified 27 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“This too shall pass” is not in the Bible. It is a Persian Sufi adage — the fable of a king's consoling ring, recorded in 12th-century Persian poetry and retold in Jewish folklore with Solomon as the sage. The documented English form is "this also shall pass away": Walter Scott to Lord Byron, 6 November 1813, and Edward FitzGerald, "Solomon's Seal," in Polonius (1852). Via quotle.info

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In context

Evoking the world of Attar of Nishapur — Persian Sufi poet and hagiographer of Nishapur. Theme: "This too shall pass". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "This too shall pass". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The 1852 printing we could read

Popularly credited to
The Bible
Actually
A Persian Sufi fable of a king’s consoling ring
English text shown
Polonius: A Collection of Wise Saws and Modern Instances
Written by / published
Edward FitzGerald, 1852 (read here in the 1887 Works, p. 433)

SOLOMON’S SEAL.

The Sultan asked Solomon for a Signet motto, that should hold good for Adversity or Prosperity. Solomon gave him, “THIS ALSO SHALL PASS AWAY.” Not in scripture

Transcribed from the scanned page of Works of Edward FitzGerald (Houghton, Mifflin, 1887), p. 433, where Polonius is reprinted with its original 1852 date. Note the wording: “this also shall pass away,” not the five-word form quoted today. Scott’s letter to Byron of 6 November 1813 gives the same words — “And this also shall pass away” — and Lincoln’s 1859 version is “And this, too, shall pass away.”

Works of Edward FitzGerald (1887), p. 433 — “Solomon’s Seal”

How we verified this

  • 12th century — The adage is traced to medieval Persian Sufi poetry; the fable of the king who asks his sages for a ring that will comfort him in sorrow, and receives one etched with these words, is recorded by Attar of Nishapur, whose Ilāhī-Nāma carries it ↗. The story also circulates in Jewish folklore, often with Solomon as the humbled king or the sage who delivers the line.
  • 6 November 1813 — Walter Scott, writing to Lord Byron from Abbotsford, recalls “the Oriental tale… of a Sultan who consulted Solomon on the proper inscription for a signet-ring” and gives the maxim as “And this also shall pass away” ↗. He treats it as a story his correspondent will already know.
  • 1852 — Edward FitzGerald prints the fable as “Solomon’s Seal” in Polonius: A Collection of Wise Saws and Modern Instances; this is the retelling that carried the adage into general English use. Read the scanned page in his collected Works ↗.
  • 30 September 1859 — Abraham Lincoln quotes it to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society in Milwaukee as the motto of an unnamed “Eastern monarch,” then argues for a prosperity that “shall not pass away” ↗.
Public domain

Every text quoted on this page is long out of copyright in the United States: Walter Scott’s 1813 letter as published by Lockhart in the 1830s, Edward FitzGerald’s Polonius (1852, reprinted 1887), and Lincoln’s 1859 address — all first published well before 1931. The adage itself is anonymous folk material with no identifiable author or claimant, so no one holds rights in the sentence.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

Who gets the credit, and why it’s wrong

This is one of the most confidently mis-sourced sentences in English. Almost everyone who quotes it places it somewhere it has never been.

The Bible Not scripture

It is not a verse. The St. Paul Center is explicit: “Many people simply assume that the phrase comes from Sacred Scripture, but in fact it appears nowhere in the Bible” — the passages it gathers as biblical parallels are Matthew 24:35, 2 Corinthians 4:17–18 and Ecclesiastes 3 ↗, none of which contains this sentence.

King Solomon A character, not the author

In every early English telling Solomon is inside the story, not behind it. Scott’s 1813 letter describes “a Sultan who consulted Solomon on the proper inscription for a signet-ring,” and calls the result “the apophthegm supplied by the Jewish sage ↗” — a line of narrative fiction, not a citation.

Abraham Lincoln He was quoting

Lincoln handled it honestly. At the Wisconsin State Fair on 30 September 1859 he prefaced it with “It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men…” ↗, and then spent the rest of the passage arguing for something that would not pass away.

Edward FitzGerald Close, but not this

FitzGerald did put the adage into English circulation, but his 1852 text reads “THIS ALSO SHALL PASS AWAY ↗.” The compressed five-word form quoted today matches no early printed source we could locate.

The honest answer: nobody owns it. It is a Persian adage carried by a folk fable — recorded in 12th-century Persian Sufi poetry, retold in Jewish folklore with Solomon as the sage, and given its English shape by Walter Scott in 1813 and Edward FitzGerald in 1852 ↗, both of whom wrote “this also shall pass away.”

Context

Why the Bible gets the credit

The adage sounds scriptural because everything around it is. In the story that carries it, the sage is King Solomon; the phrasing is King-James-shaped — “and this also shall pass away” — and the sentiment sits comfortably beside Ecclesiastes. Readers reach for the Bible because the sentence has been dressed in its clothes for two centuries.

But the trail runs east, not to Jerusalem. Wikipedia’s survey traces the specific phrase to medieval Persian Sufi poets and the fable of a king who commissions a ring motto that will steady him in triumph and in disaster; the same story circulates in Jewish folklore, sometimes compressed to the Hebrew initials for Gam zeh ya’avor. When Walter Scott passed it to Byron in 1813 he called it, precisely, “the Oriental tale.”

Solomon is a character in the story, not the author of it.

What Lincoln actually did with it

Abraham Lincoln used the line at the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society fair in Milwaukee on 30 September 1859, and he introduced it as borrowed goods: “It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: ‘And this, too, shall pass away.’”

He then argued against it. Lincoln granted the maxim its power — “How chastening in the hour of pride! — how consoling in the depths of affliction!” — before reaching for something he hoped would outlast it: a prosperity “which, while the earth endures, shall not pass away.” He is quoted today for a sentence he was pushing back on.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Resilience Change Time

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

This too shall passen.wikipedia.org

The origin survey: Persian Sufi roots, the Attar ring fable, Jewish folklore versions, and the English trail from Scott to FitzGerald to Lincoln.
Is “This Too Shall Pass” in the Bible?stpaulcenter.com

States plainly that the phrase appears nowhere in the Bible, and gathers the scriptural passages that merely echo its sense.
Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Vol. 4gutenberg.org

Lockhart’s volume containing Scott’s 6 November 1813 letter to Byron with “And this also shall pass away.”
Works of Edward FitzGerald (1887)archive.org

Scanned page 433: the “Solomon’s Seal” entry from FitzGerald’s Polonius (1852).
Lincoln’s Address to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Societyabrahamlincolnonline.org

Full text of the 30 September 1859 Milwaukee speech, where Lincoln quotes the maxim and then argues past it.
this too shall pass (etymology)en.wiktionary.org

Records the English phrase as a calque of Classical Persian اِین نِیز بُگْذَرَد (īn nīz bugzarad).

The recorder, not the inventor

Who was Attar of Nishapur?

Attar of Nishapur

c. 1145 – c. 1221 · Persian Sufi poet and hagiographer of Nishapur

Farid ud-Din Attar was a Persian poet, theoretician of Sufism and hagiographer from Nishapur, best known for The Conference of the Birds and the Memorial of the Saints; he shaped Persian mystical poetry and influenced Rumi directly. His Ilāhī-Nāma (“Book of God”), a poem of roughly 6,500 verses built from anecdotal tales, is where the fable of the king and the consoling ring is recorded. He is a transmitter here, not an author — the adage was already folk material moving through Persian and Jewish storytelling, and no single person can be shown to have coined it.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary sources

Edward FitzGerald, “Solomon’s Seal,” in Polonius: A Collection of Wise Saws and Modern Instances (1852), reprinted in Works of Edward FitzGerald (Houghton, Mifflin, 1887), 433. Earlier English telling: Walter Scott to Lord Byron, Abbotsford, 6 November 1813, in J. G. Lockhart, Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, vol. 4 (of 10).

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘This too shall pass’?” Last verified 27 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/this-too-shall-pass/

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