When a sage comes in contact with fools, he must not expect to be honoured, and if an ignorant man overcomes a sage in an oratorical contest, it is no wonder, because even a stone breaks a jewel.

What wonder is there that the song
Of a nightingale ceases when imprisoned with a crow
Or that a virtuous man under the tyranny of vagabonds
Feels affliction in his heart and is irate.
Although a base stone may break a golden vase,

From a body without a heart obedience does not arise and a husk without a kernel is no stock in trade.

Not everyone who is brisk in dispute is correct in business.
Many a stature concealed by a sheet
If revealed appears to be the mother of one’s mother.

Three things cannot subsist without three things: property without trade, science without controversy and a country without punishment.

Speak sometimes in a friendly, conciliatory, manly way
Perhaps thou wilt ensnare a heart with the lasso.
Sometimes speak in anger; for a hundred jars of sugar
Will on occasion not have the effect of one dose of colocynth.

If thou art aware of news which will grieve a heart, remain silent that others may convey it.

Nightingale, bring tidings of spring.
Leave bad news to the owl.

Ask not a dervish in poor circumstances, and in the distress of a year of famine, how he feels, unless thou art ready to apply a salve to his wound or to provide him with a maintenance.

When thou seest an ass, fallen in mud with his load,
Have mercy in thy heart and step not on his head.
But when thou hast gone and asked him how he fell,
Gird thy loins and take hold of his tail like a man.

The amity of princes and the sweet voice of children are not to be trusted, because the former is changed by fancy and the latter in the course of one night.

Give not thy heart to a sweetheart of a thousand lovers,
And if thou givest it, thou givest that heart for separation.

An illustrious man had a worthy son who died. Being asked what he desired to be written upon the sarcophagus of the tomb, he replied: ‘The verses of the glorious book’ are deserving of more honour than to be written on such a spot, where they would be injured by the lapse of time, would be walked upon by persons passing by and urinated upon by dogs. If anything is necessarily to be written, let what follows suffice:

Wah! How-every time the plants in the garden
Sprouted-glad became my heart.
Pass by, O friend, that in the spring

It is narrated in the compositions of philosophers that scorpions are not born in the same manner like other living beings but that they devour the bowels of their mother and, after gnawing through the belly, betake themselves to the desert. The skins which may be seen in the nests of scorpions are the evidence of this.

The son of a wealthy but avaricious old man, having fallen sick, his well-wishers advised him that it would be proper to get the whole Quran recited or else to offer a sacrifice. He meditated a while and then said: ‘It is preferable to read the Quran because the flock is at a distance.’ A holy man, who had heard this, afterwards remarked: ‘He selected the reading of the Quran because it is at the tip of the tongue but the money at the bottom of the heart.’

It is useful to bend the neck in prayers
If they are to be accompanied by almsgiving.

In the folly of youth I one day shouted at my mother who then sat down with a grieved heart in a corner and said, weeping: ‘Hast thou forgotten thy infancy that thou art harsh towards me?’

How sweetly said the old woman to her son
When she saw him overthrow a tiger, and elephant-bodied:
‘If thou hadst remembered the time of thy infancy
How helpless thou wast in my arms
Thou would’st this day not have been harsh
For thou art a lion-like man, and I an old woman.’