Court the society of a superior, and make much of the opportunity! for in the company of an equal thy good fortune must decline.
The old man spoke a great deal in this style, and thought that he had caught her heart in his snare, and made sure of her as his prey, when she suddenly drew a cold sigh from the bottom of a much-afflicted bosom, and answered:
“All this speech which you have delivered has not, in the scale of my judgment, the weight of that one sentence which I have heard of my nurse, that it were better to plant a spear in a young maiden’s side than to lay her by an old man in bed. Much contention and strife will arise in that house where the wife shall get dissatisfied with her husband.”
Unable to rise without the help of a staff, how can an old man stir the staff of life?
In short, there being no prospect of concord, they agreed to separate. After lapse of the period prescribed by the law, she united in wedlock with a young man of an ill-tempered and sullen disposition, and in very narrow circumstances, so that she endured much tyranny and violence, penury and hardship. Yet she was thus offering up thanksgivings for the Almighty’s goodness, and saying:
“Praised be God that I have escaped from such hell-torment, and secured a blessing so permanent. With all this violence and impetuosity of temper, I bear with his caprice, because he is handsome. It were better for me to burn with him in hellfire than to dwell in paradise with the other.”
The smell of an onion from the mouth of the lovely is sweeter than that of a rose in the hand of the ugly.
—The Rose Garden (Gulistan).
1. Locman the wise being asked, “Whence did you learn wisdom?” answered, From the blind, who try the path with a stick before they tread on it....