Let a man be wealthy, and he shall be quite wise, learned in the sacred writings and of good birth; virtuous, handsome and eloquent. Gold attracts all the virtues to itself. The same portion of the sky that forms a circle round the moon by night also forms a circle round the sun by day How great is the labour of both! * * * * * A sour heart; a face hardened with inward pride and a nature as difficult to penetrate as the narrowest of mountain passes--these things are known to be characteristic of women: their mind is known by the wise to be as changeable as the drop of dew on the lotus leaf. Faults develop in a woman as she grows up, exactly as poisonous branches sprout from the creeper. * * * * * The beautiful features of a woman are praised by the poets--her breasts are compared to pots of gold: her face to the shining moon, and her hips to the forehead of an elephant: nevertheless the beauty of a woman merits no praise. * * * * * From _The Baharistan_, the work of Jami, a Persian poet and philosopher. * * * * * Bahlúl being asked to count the fools of Basrah, replied: “They are without the confines of computation. If you ask me, I will count the wise men, for they are no more than a limited few.” * * * * * A learned man being annoyed while writing a letter to one of his confidential friends, at the conduct of a person who, seated at his side, glanced out of the corner of his eye at his writing, wrote: “Had not a hireling thief been seated at my side and engaged in reading my letter I should have written to thee all my secrets.” The man said: “By God, my lord, I have neither read nor even looked at thy letter.” “Fool!” exclaimed the other; “how then canst thou say what thou now sayest?” A mendicant once coming to beg something at the door of a house, the master of it called out to him from the interior: “Pray excuse me: the women of the house are not here.” The beggar retorted: “I wish for a morsel of bread, not to embrace the women of the house.” * * * * * A certain person made a claim of ten dirams on Júhí. The judge enquired: “Hast thou any testimony to offer?” On the answer being in the negative he continued: “Shall I put him on his oath?” “Of what value is _his_ oath?” said the man in reply. “O judge of the Faithful,” then proposed Júhí in his turn, “there lives in my quarter of the town an Imám, temperate, truthful and beneficent, send for him and put him on his oath instead of me, that this man’s mind may be easy.” * * * * * A poet read me once a wretched ode-- Verse of the kind where “alif” finds no place. I said the kind of verse that _thou_ should’st make, Is that in which _no_ letter we could trace. * * * * *