Love is a boaster at heart, who cannot hide the stolen horse without giving a glimpse of the bridle.

Tell a man what he may not sing and he is still half free; even all free, if he never wanted to sing it. But tell him what he must sing, take up his time with it so that his true voice cannot sound even in secret -- there, I have seen is slavery.

All tragedies deal with fated meetings; how else could there be a play? Fate deals its stroke; sorrow is purged, or turned to rejoicing; there is death, or triumph; there has been a meeting, and a change. No one will ever make a tragedy - and that is as well, for one could not bear it - whose grief is that the principals never met.

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.

Never destroy without thought your enemy's pretences; they are usually your best weapon against him.

It is bitter to lose a friend to evil before one loses him to death.