red from a man when he talks in his sleep or
in his drunkenness"; "The ignorant can be satisfied easily, and still
more easily the well educated, but a man who has become confused by a
little knowledge cannot be won over even by Brahma"; "Good people are
pacified by fair treatment, even if they have been very angry, but not
common people; gold, though it is hard, can be melted, but not grass";
"By too great familiarity we produce low esteem, by too frequent
visits, indifference; in the Malaja mountains a beggar woman uses the
sandalwood tree for firewood"; "The silly man steps in without being
invited, talks much without being questioned, and trusts him who does
not deserve confidence"; "New knowledge does not last in the mind of
the uneducated any more than a string of pearls about the neck of a
monkey"; "The inner power of great men becomes more evident in their
misfortune than in their fortune; the fine perfume of aloes wood is
strongest when it falls into the fire"; "The anger of the best man
lasts an instant, of the mediocre man six hours, of the common man a
day and a night, and the rascal will never get rid of it"; "The
scholar laughs with his eyes, mediocre people show their teeth when
they laugh, common people roar, and true men of wisdom never laugh";
"Truthfulness and cleverness can be found out in the course of a
conversation, but modesty and restraint are visible at the first
glance"; "Grief destroys wisdom, grief destroys scholarship, grief
destroys endurance; there is no perturbation of the mind like grief."
Often we hardly know whether a psychological observation or a metaphor
is given to us. In any case we may appreciate the fineness of a saying
like this: "Even a most translucent, beautiful, perfectly round and
charming pearl can be strung on a thread as soon as it has been
pierced; so a mind which longs for salvation, perfectly pure, free
from quarrel with any one and full of goodness, will nevertheless be
bound down to the earthly life as soon as it quarrels with itself." On
the borderland of psychology we may find sayings like these: "As a
tailor's needle fastens the thread in the garment, so the thread of
our earthly life becomes fastened by the needle of our desires"; "An
elephant kills us if he touches us, a snake even if he smells us, a
prince even if he smiles on us, and a scoundrel even if he adores us."
But there is one saying which the most modern psychologist would
accept, as it might just a