Happy is the man who learns from the misfortunes of others.
The Bull, the Lioness, and the Wild-Boar Hunter
A BULL finding a lion’s cub asleep gored him to death with his horns. The Lioness came up, and bitterly lamented the death of her whelp. A wild-boar Hunter, seeing her distress, stood at a distance and said to her, “Think how many men there are who have reason to lament the loss of their children, whose deaths have been caused by you.”
The Oak and the Woodcutters
THE WOODCUTTER cut down a Mountain Oak and split it in pieces, making wedges of its own branches for dividing the trunk. The Oak said with a sigh, “I do not care about the blows of the axe aimed at my roots, but I do grieve at being torn in pieces by these wedges made from my own branches.”
Misfortunes springing from ourselves are the hardest to bear.