From those I trust God guard me; from those I mistrust I will guard myself.
Who would have many friends let him test but few.
Tell your secret to your friend, and he will set his foot on your neck.
Or, again, what can be thought of such maxims as, that it is expedient to peel a fig for your friend but a peach for your enemy; that the man who esteems none but himself is happy as a king; that public money, like holy water, is the property of all men; or that with art and knavery men may live through half the year, and with knavery and art through the other?
The Persian proverbs seem to breathe a different moral atmosphere from these, being as generous in character as the Italian are cynical, and displaying a free spirit of liberality, trust, independence, above all, of truthfulness, which is unsurpassed in any country of Europe. If in Italy it is common to say that a man who cannot flatter knows not how to talk, in Persia the sentiment prevails that to flatter is worse than to abuse. The Persian, true to the character given of him by Herodotus, holds boldly, that the man who speaks truth is always at ease; that men never suffer from speaking the truth; that it behoves them to speak their minds unreservedly, for that there is no hill in front of the tongue. Add to this the popular sayings, that the accounts of friends are in the heart, and that it is better to be in chains with friends than in the garden with strangers. That it should have become proverbial in Persia, that a man lowers himself by vexing the poor, and loses all claim to greatness by finding fault with his inferiors, proves the purity of a religion which has instilled such thoughts into the ethics of a nation; nor could any language in Europe produce proverbs characterised by a higher spirit of morality than is revealed in the following selection:—
A high name is better than a high house.
The cure for anger is silence.
A man must cut out his own garments of reputation.
Heaven is at the feet of mothers (i.e. lies in dutiful obedience).
It is better to die of want than to beg.