WISE SAYINGS OF THE RABBIS.
“Concise sentences,” says Bacon, “like darts, fly abroad and make impressions, while long discourses are flat things, and not regarded.” And Seneca has remarked that “even rude and uncultivated minds are struck, as it were, with those short but weighty sentences which anticipate all reasoning by flashing truths upon them at once.” Wise men in all ages seem to have been fully aware of the advantage of condensing into pithy sentences the results of their observations of the course of human life; and the following selection of sayings of the Jewish Fathers, taken from the Pirke Aboth (the 41st treatise of the Talmud, compiled by Nathan of Babylon, A.D. 200), and other sources, will be found to be quite as sagacious as the aphorisms of the most celebrated philosophers of India and Greece:
This world is like an ante-chamber in comparison with the world to come; prepare thyself in the ante-chamber, therefore, that thou mayest enter into the dining-room.
Be humble to a superior, and affable to an inferior, and receive all men with cheerfulness.
Be not scornful to any, nor be opposed to all things; for there is no man that hath not his hour, nor is there anything which hath not its place.
Attempt not to appease thy neighbour in the time of his anger, nor comfort him in the time when his dead is lying before him, nor ask of him in the time of his vowing, nor desire to see him in the time of his calamity.[96]
Hold no man responsible for his utterances in times of grief.
Who gains wisdom? He who is willing to receive instruction from all sources. Who is rich? He who is content with his lot. Who is deserving of honour? He who honoureth mankind. Who is the mighty man? He who subdueth his temper.[97]
When a liar speaks the truth, he finds his punishment in being generally disbelieved.
The physician who prescribes gratuitously gives a worthless prescription.