let him go, as he is no longer of any use to them.”
The same one-sidedness and epigrammatic exaggeration can always be
felt where whole groups of men are to be characterized. “The faults of
the dwarf are sixty, of the red-haired man eighty, of the humpback a
hundred, and of the one-eyed man innumerable.”
But let us rather turn to sayings in which the subtlety of
psychological observation deserves admiration: “The drunkard, the
careless, the insane, the fatigued, the angry, the hungry, the greedy,
the timid, the hasty, and the lover know no law”; “If a man commits a
crime, his voice and the colour of his face become changed, his look
becomes furtive, and the fire is gone from his eye”; “The best remedy
for a pain is no longer to think of it; if you think of it, the pain
will increase”; “A greedy man can be won by money, an angry man by
folding the hands, a fool by doing his will, and an educated man by
speaking the truth”; “The wise man can recognize the inner thoughts of
another from the colour of his face, from his look, from the sound of
his words, from his walk, from the reflections in his eyes, and from
the form of his mouth”; “The good and bad thoughts, however much they
are hidden, can be discovered from a man when he talks in his sleep or
in his drunkenness”; “The ignorant can be satisfied easily, and still
more easily the well educated, but a man who has become confused by a
little knowledge cannot be won over even by Brahma”; “Good people are
pacified by fair treatment, even if they have been very angry, but not
common people; gold, though it is hard, can be melted, but not grass”;
“By too great familiarity we produce low esteem, by too frequent
visits, indifference; in the Malaja mountains a beggar woman uses the
sandalwood tree for firewood”; “The silly man steps in without being
invited, talks much without being questioned, and trusts him who does
not deserve confidence”; “New knowledge does not last in the mind of
the uneducated any more than a string of pearls about the neck of a
monkey”; “The inner power of great men becomes more evident in their
misfortune than in their fortune; the fine perfume of aloes wood is
strongest when it falls into the fire”; “The anger of the best man
lasts an instant, of the mediocre man six hours, of the common man a
day and a night, and the rascal will never get rid of it”; “The
scholar laughs with his eyes, mediocre people show their teeth when
they laugh, common people roar, and true men of wisdom never laugh”;
“Truthfulness and cleverness can be found out in the course of a
conversation, but modesty and restraint are visible at the first
glance”; “Grief destroys wisdom, grief destroys scholarship, grief
destroys endurance; there is no perturbation of the mind like grief.”
Often we hardly know whether a psychological observation or a metaphor
is given to us. In any case we may appreciate the fineness of a saying
like this: “Even a most translucent, beautiful, perfectly round and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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