The precious things in heavenly eyes
Are love, and truth, and trust, and hope.
———
A gem which falls within the mire will still a gem remain;
Men's eyes turn downward to the earth and search for it with pain.
But dust, though whirled aloft to heaven, continues dust alway,
More base and noxious in the air than when on earth it lay.
—Saadi, tr. by James Freeman Clarke.
———
It was not anything she said;