From a body without a heart obedience does not arise and a husk without a kernel is no stock in trade.
Not everyone who is brisk in dispute is correct in business.
Many a stature concealed by a sheet
If revealed appears to be the mother of one’s mother.
Who acquires science and does not practise it, resembles him who possesses an ox but does not use him to plough or to sow seed.
Whoever associates with bad people will see no good.
If an angel associates with a demon
He will learn from him fear, fraud and hypocrisy.
Of the wicked thou canst learn only wickedness.
A wolf will not take to sewing jackets.
Affairs succeed by patience and a hasty man fails.
I saw with my eyes in the desert
That a slow man overtook a fast one.
A galloping horse, fleet like the wind, fell back
Whilst the camel-man continued slowly his progress.
Satan cannot conquer the righteous and the sultan the poor.
Lend nothing to a prayerless man
Although his mouth may gasp from penury;
Because he who neglects the commands of God
Will also not care for what he may be indebted to thee.
Life is in the keeping of a single breath and the world is an existence between two annihilations. Those who sell the religion for the world ‘are asses’, they sell Joseph but what do ‘they buy’? Did I not command you, O sons of Adam, that ye should not worship Satan?
On the word of a foe thou hast broken faith with a friend.
See from whom thou hast cut thyself off and to whom united.
Unless an orator’s defects are mentioned by someone, his good points will not be praised.
Be not proud of the beauty of thy speech,
Of the approbation of an ignoramus and of thy own opinion.
A fool is pleased by flattery like the inflated heel of a corpse that has the appearance of fatness.
Take care not to listen to the voice of a flatterer
Who expects cheaply to derive profit from thee.
If one day thou failest to satisfy his wishes
He enumerates two hundred faults of thine.
Whoever gives advice to a self-willed man stands himself in need of advice.
When all the artifices of an enemy have failed he shakes the chain of friendship, and thereon performs acts of friendship which no enemy is able to do.
