Original content

English translation

A sage (hakim) is one who knows the reality of things as far as he is able, and who makes acting according to what pertains to action a settled disposition of his own soul.

Happy is he who forsakes fleeting pleasure and contrives for everlasting endurance; who strives, and all that can be known he knows, and then acts upon all that he knows.

Alexander the Roman, in the early days of his conquest, took a fortress by a complete stratagem and ordered its destruction. They told him that within it dwelt a wise and learned sage, able in resolving the difficulties of wisdom. He summoned him. When the sage came, Alexander saw a form far from the acceptance of nature, from which the disposition of accepting people recoiled. He said: 'What strange face and awesome figure is this?' The sage was angered by that speech, and laughing amid his agitation he said:

Do not taunt me for an ugly face, O you who are empty of virtue and fairness; the body is like a sheath and the soul a sword— it is the sword that does the work, not the sheath.

He said again: Whoever's disposition toward people is not good, his own skin upon his body is his prison; he has fallen into such a strait from his own existence that a real prison beside it is an open banquet-hall.

One who employs an ill temper with everyone is ever tested, gripped in a hundred sorrows—know this; do not go to the constable that his dwelling be made a prison, for the skin upon the ill-natured one's body is prison enough.

And he said again: The envious one is ever in torment and contends with his own Lord; whatever is given to others he disapproves, and whatever is not his own portion, upon that his heart is set.

It is an objection against the decrees of the wise Ruler of the world— the custom of the envious man, may dust be in his mouth: whatever he sees in another's hand he raises a wail, asking why it was given to him without cause, and not to me.

He said again: The wise and generous spend their wealth upon friends, while the foolish and mean leave it behind for enemies.

Whatever comes into the hand of the generous man he scatters all at the feet of his friends; and what the base-natured miser hoards remains after his death for the enemy.

He said again: To engage with the foolish in jest and mockery is to pour away the honor of greatness and to stir up the dust of abasement and disgrace.

O you who tear the garment in quarrel with a base fellow, I fear your name will be branded as 'wolf'; do not make a habit of mockery with the foolish, lest the splendor of your greatness be lost.

He said again: Whoever takes up the way of fist-fighting with his inferiors will die trampled underfoot by his superiors.

O heart, hear from me this fine point that has remained in my ear from the masters of subtlety: that whoever draws the sword of unkindness will be slain by the sword of the unkind.

When Alexander found his ear filled with those jewels of wisdom, he filled the sage's mouth with jewels just as his own ear had been filled, and he turned his rein away from destroying that fortress.