• Saadi on love:

The children of Adam are limbs of each other

Having been created of one essence.

When the calamity of time afflicts one limb

The other limbs cannot remain at rest.

If you have no sympathy for the troubles of others

You are not worthy to be called by the name of "man".

• I never lamented about the vicissitudes of time or complained of the

turns of fortune except on the occasion when I was barefooted and
unable to procure slippers. But when I entered the great mosque of
Kufah with a sore heart and beheld a man without feet I offered thanks
to the bounty of God, consoled myself for my want of shoes and
recited:

'A roast fowl is to the sight of a satiated man

Less valuable than a blade of fresh grass on the table

And to him who has no means nor power

A burnt turnip is a roasted fowl.'

• The Gulistan, translated by Sir Edwin Arnold.

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• A little and a little, collected together, becomes a great deal; the heap in the barn consists of single grains, and drop and drop make the inundation.

• Have patience. All things are difficult before they become easy.

• He who is a slave to his stomach seldom worships God.

• I fear God and next to God I mostly fear them that fear Him not.

• The best loved by God are those that are rich, yet have the humility of the poor, and those that are poor and have the magnanimity of the rich.

• To give pleasure to a single heart by a single kind act is better than a thousand head-bowings in prayer.

• The rose and the thorn, and sorrow and gladness are linked together.

• When the belly is empty, the body becomes spirit; and when it is full, the spirit becomes body.

• Whenever you argue with another wiser than yourself in order that others may admire your wisdom, they will discover your ignorance.

• Every leaf of the tree becomes a page of the sacred scripture once the soul has learnt to read.