“The march of good fortune has backward slips: to retreat one or
two paces gives wings to the jumper.”

“The wave is ignorant of the true nature of the sea: how can the
Temporal comprehend the Eternal?”

“The touchstone of false friends is the day of need: by way of proot,
ask a loan from your friends.”

“The learned man is a stranger amidst the people of the world,
just as the ‘witness-finger’ [i.e. the index-finger] appears strange
on the Christian's hand.”

“What doth it profit thee that all the libraries of the world should be
thine? Not knowledge but what thou dost put into practice is
thine.”

“The life of this transitory world is the expectation of death: to re-
nounce life is to escape from the expectation of annihilation.”

“O my dear friend! thou hast more care for wealth than for life:
Thy attachment to the turban is greater than to the head.”

“Our heart is heedless of the Beloved, notwithstanding our complete
proximity:
The fish lives through the sea, yet heeds not the sea.”

“The weeping of the candle is not in mourning for the moth: the
dawn is at hand, and it is thinking of its own dark night.”

“To quit this troubled world is better than to enter it: the rose-bud
enters the garden with straitened heart and departs smiling.”

“If friendship is firmly established between two hearts, they do not
need the interchange of news.”

“When a man becomes old, his greed becomes young: sleep grows
heavy at the time of morning.”

“To the seeker after pearls silence is a speaking argument, for no
breath comes forth from the diver in the sea.”

“Not one handful of earth is wasted in this tavern: they make it
either into a pitcher, a wine-jar, or a wine-cup.”

“The enjoyments of both worlds will not satisfy the greedy man:
Burning fire has always an appetite.”

“The humá * of happiness came to me in old age; the shadow of
fortune came to me at the time of [the sun's] decline:
Heaven became kind to me at the close of my life: peaceful slumber
visited me at morning-time.”

“I talk of repentance in the days of old age; I bite my lip [in re-
morse] now that no teeth remain to me.”

“When perfection * is unduly increased it becomes the destroyer of life:
The tender branch breaks when it bears too much fruit.”

“If I am mad, then who on the face of the earth is sane? If thou art
sane, then there is no madman in the world.”

“The only thing which troubles me about the Resurrection Day is
this,
That one will have to look once again on the faces of mankind.”

“Become placeless, for to change this place of water and clay is but
to move from one prison to another.”

“I do not bid thee detach thy heart from the sum of the world: de-
tach thy heart from whatever lies beyond thy reach.”

“In the end the idolator is better than the worshipper of self: better
be in bondage to the Franks than in the bondage of self.”

“If thou dost not trample under foot this world of form, then suffer
until the Resurrection the torments of this tight boot.”

“Within his own house every beggar is an emperor: do not overstep
thine own limit and be a king.”

“If I worship the rose according to the rites of the nightingale, it is
a fault—I, who in the worship of fire am of the religion of the
moth.”

“Everyone who like the candle exalts his head with a crown of gold
will oft-times sit [immersed] in his tears up to the neck.”

“Formerly people used to grieve over the departed, but in our days
they grieve over the survivors.”

“Either one should not avert one's face from the torrent of vicissitudes,
Or one should not make one's home in the plain of the Phenomenal
World.”

“Every tombstone is a hand stretched forth from the house of oblivion
of the earth to search for thee.”

“The hair has become white through the squeezing of the sphere, and
the milk which I had drunk in the time of childhood has re-
appeared [on my head].”

“If everyone could easily become honoured in his own country,
How would Joseph have passed from his father's embrace to a prison?”