Saadi: Difference between revisions

Saadi (Persian: سعدی) ‎(1184 - 1283/1291?) was a Persian poet, a native of Shiraz, Persia. There is some discrepancy about the date of his death, but he may have died a centenarian.

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• Whatever is produced in haste goes easily to waste.{{source{{

• Another famous poem focuses on the oneness of mankind, and is used to grace the entrance to the Hall of Nations of the UN building in New York with this call for breaking all barriers: ^[1][2]

بنی آدم اعضای یک پیکرند
که در آفرينش ز یک گوهرند

چو عضوى به درد آورد روزگار
دگر عضوها را نماند قرار

تو کز محنت دیگران بی غمی
نشاید که نامت نهند آدمی

Human beings are members of a whole,

In creation of one essence and soul.

If one member is afflicted with pain,

Other members uneasy will remain.

If you have no sympathy for human pain,

The name of human you cannot retain.

• Saadi on love:^{[citation needed]}

The children of Adam are limbs of each other

Having been created of one essence.

When the calamity of time afflicts one limb

The other limbs cannot remain at rest.

If you have no sympathy for the troubles of others

You are not worthy to be called by the name of "man".

• I never lamented about the vicissitudes of time or complained of the

turns of fortune except on the occasion when I was barefooted and unable to procure slippers. But when I entered the great mosque of Kufah with a sore heart and beheld a man without feet I offered thanks to the bounty of God, consoled myself for my want of shoes and recited:

'A roast fowl is to the sight of a satiated man

Less valuable than a blade of fresh grass on the table

And to him who has no means nor power

A burnt turnip is a roasted fowl.'

• The Gulistan, translated by Sir Edwin Arnold.

• Use a sweet tongue, courtesy, and gentleness, and thou mayst manage to guide an elephant with a hair.
  • The Guilstan, Chapter III

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Saadi (poet)