Often a purple patch or two is tacked on to a serious work of high promise, to give an effect of colour.

Do you count your birthdays with gratitude?

Avoid inquisitive persons, for they are sure to be gossips, their ears are open to hear, but they will not keep what is entrusted to them.

All things considered, nothing is beautiful.

No poems can please long or live that are written by water drinkers.

There is nothing hard inside the olive; nothing hard outside the nut.

The mountains are in labour, the birth will be an absurd little mouse.