* * * * * When the wind blows, the fool tries to compete by shouting. Summer is most loved in winter, and winter in summer. Ugliness moves slowly, but beauty is in great haste. God speaks every language except the godless, God grants everything except eternity, God takes back everything but sins. The best thing that the last man on earth can do is just what the first man could do. He can kneel on the earth, his mother, and pray to God, his father. The fool is wisest when he sleeps; the wise man is most foolish when he dances. When young men stand at the bier of an old man, it is pathetic; if old men stand at the bier of a young man, it is grievous; but God sees all and keeps silent. Why should you lament? * * * * * If you kill a solitary man, his kinsmen from the other world will persecute you. Nobody can forever conceal what is good in you, nor can you yourself conceal what is evil. There is no real death except the death of the soul. There is no real joy except the joy of a righteous man. The joy of the sinner is half joy and half retribution. The eyes are the controller of the tongue. A clever man tells his lies with his eyes closed. What is the news? There is no news but what is half old. It is better to talk about what you know than to talk about what you do not know. He who can love passionately can hate passionately. Maternal love is most enduring, a brother's hatred the shortest. There is no harvest without seed. We see often a harvest of evil, the seed of which time has concealed. * * * * * In the life to come all our senses will be doubled and quadrupled, so that when we see we shall see not only with our eyes but with our whole being, and when we hear and when we smell or taste it is the same. Thus will it be where the morning sun shines always. We see only the beams of the sun, but the spirits also hear them; we hear the song of the nightingale, but the spirits also see it. In the next world what we now hear we shall see; what we now see we shall hear, and shall taste what we now smell. Gold shines, and by shining speaks. How can you understand its language? God does, because He sent its language to the gold. * * * * * What is man? Something between God and clay. What is clay? Something that God makes. What is God? Something of which clay and man are the shadow. It is no wonder that an animal should be selfish, not knowing its end. But it is wonderful that man can be selfish, knowing and foreseeing his end. * * * * * A Turk once asked a Serb why the Serbs wept so much. The Serb replied, "To wash away your Turkish sins." A Turk asked a Serb why the Serbs reminded people of the field of Kossovo. "Because," said the Serb, "our dead are better than your living."