Gulistan or flower garden / Sadi ; translated with an essay by James Ross and a note upon the translator by Charles Sayle.

  • Saʻdī.
Date:
[between 1900 and 1999?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Gulistan or flower garden / Sadi ; translated with an essay by James Ross and a note upon the translator by Charles Sayle. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    hand, sugar does not derive its value from the cane, but from its own innate quality :—“ Inasmuch as the disposition of Canaan was bad, his descent from the prophet Noah stood him in no stead. Pride thyself on what virtue thou hast, and not on thy parentage; the rose springs from a thorn-bush, and Abraham from Azor” [either his father’s name, or fire]. LXI. That is musk which discloses itself by its smell, and not what the perfumers impose upon us :—“ If a man be expert in any art he needs not tell it, for his own skill will show it.” LXII. A wise man is, like a vase in a druggist’s shop, silent, but full of virtues; and the ignorant man resembles the drum of the warrior, being full of noise, and an empty babbler :—“ The sincerely devout have remarked that a learned man, beset by the illiterate, is like one of the lovely in a circle of the blind, or the holy Koran in the dwelling of the infidel.” LXIII. A friend whom they take an age to conciliate, it were wrong all at once to alienate :—“ In a series of years a stone changes into a ruby; take heed, and destroy it not at once by dashing it against another stone.”