We Persians have a saying that one should deliberate serious matters first drunk, then sober.

It is something, I thought, when a king can put a courtesan to the blush.

All men seek esteem; the best by lifting themselves, which is hard to do, the rest by shoving others down, which is much easier.

An audience of twenty thousand, sitting on its hands, could not have produced such an echoing silence.

True friends share everything, except the past before they met.

The perpetual stream of human nature is formed into ever-changing shallows, eddies, falls and pools by the land over which it passes. Perhaps the only real value of history lies in considering this endlessly varied play between the essence and the accidents.

Often beauty grows dull or common when speech breaks the mask.