A friend whom you have been gaining during your whole life, you ought not to be displeased with in a moment. A stone is many years becoming a ruby - take care that you do not destroy it in an instant against another stone.
SaadiRead
When the belly is empty, the body becomes spirit; and when it is full, the spirit becomes body.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the relationship between physical needs and spiritual state.
Saadi's quote emphasizes the interconnectedness of the physical body and the spirit. It suggests that when one's physical needs, such as hunger, are unmet, the spirit is heightened, possibly due to the focus on survival. Conversely, when one is well-fed and content, the focus may shift back to the physical, suggesting a balance between the two states and the idea that our material condition influences our spiritual well-being.
Themes
SpiritBodyHungerNeedsBalance
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of addressing basic human needs, one might say, 'As Saadi wisely put it, when the belly is empty, the body becomes spirit.'
More from Saadi
All quotes →The bad fortune of the good turns their faces up to heaven; the good fortune of the bad bows their heads down to the earth.
SaadiRead
However much you study, you cannot know without action. A donkey laden with books is neither an intellectual nor a wise man. Empty of essence, what learning has he whether upon him is firewood or book?
SaadiRead
Ants, fighting together, will vanquish the lion.
SaadiRead
An enemy to whom you show kindness becomes your friend, excepting lust, the indulgence of which increases its enmity.
SaadiRead
Human beings are members of a whole,_x000D_ In creation of one essence and soul._x000D_ If one member is afflicted with pain,_x000D_ Other members uneasy will remain._x000D_ If you have no sympathy for human pain,_x000D_ The name of human you cannot retain.
SaadiRead
Similar quotes
Man... knows only when he is satisfied and when he suffers, and only his sufferings and his satisfactions instruct him concerning himself, teach him what to seek and what to avoid. For the rest, man is a confused creature; he knows not whence he comes or whither he goes, he knows little of the world, and above all, he knows little of himself.
Johann Wolfgang Von GoetheRead
To whom can I expose the urgency of my own passion?…There is nobody—here among these grey arches, and moaning pigeons, and cheerful games and tradition and emulation, all so skilfully organised to prevent feeling alone.
Virginia WoolfRead
There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to the church as a human being.
James JoyceRead
The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own.
Aldous HuxleyRead
As if they were our own handiwork we place a high value on our characters.
EpicurusRead
The framers of our Constitution meant we were to have freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.
Billy GrahamRead