Saadi

Saadi

Saadi Shīrāzī (Persian: ابومحمّد مصلح‌الدین بن عبدالله شیرازی), better known by his pen name Saadi (Persian: سعدی, romanized: Saʿdī), also known as Sadi of Shiraz (سعدی شیرازی, Saʿdī Shīrāzī; born 1210; died 1291 or 1292), was a major Persian poet and prose writer of the medieval period. He is recognized for the quality of his writings and for the depth of his social and moral thoughts.

Quotes

Gulistan (1258)

• 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

  • banī 'ādam a'zā-ye yek peykar-and
    ke dar 'āfarīn-aš ze yek gowhar-and
    čo 'ozvī be dard āvarad rūzgār
    degar 'ozvhā-rā na-mānad qarār
    to k-az mehnat-ē dīgarān bīqam-ī
    na-šāyad ke nām-at nahand ādamī
  • Translation:
    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.

  • Alternative translation:
    The children of Adam are limbs of a whole
    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 "human".
    • Chapter 1, story 10

• 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 [shoes]. 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.'
  • Chapter 3, story 19. Translated by Sir Edwin Arnold. (Persian version)

• Use a sweet tongue, courtesy, and gentleness, and thou mayst manage to guide an elephant with a hair.
  • Chapter 3, story 28

• When gnats act in concert they will bring
  down an elephant: when ants set to work,
  and move in a body, they can strip a fierce
  lion of its hide
  • Chapter 3, story 28

• Whatever is produced in haste goes easily to waste.
  • Chapter 8, story 36

External links

• Recitation of Bani Adam in Persian by Amir H. Ghaseminejad
• "Saadi" in R. W. Emerson's Poems (1847)