Mosleh ebn Abdollah Sadi Shirazi
"Purgatory May be Paradise"
from "Golestan"


A king was embarked along with a Persian slave in board a ship. The boy had never been at sea, nor experienced inconvenience of a ship. He set up a weeping and wailing, and all his limbs were in a state of trepidation; and however much they soothed him, he was not to be pacified. King's pleasure-party was disconcerted by him; but they had no help. On board that ship there was a physician. He said to the king: "If you will order it, I can manage to silence him." King replied: "It will be an act of great favor."

The physician so directed that they threw the boy into the sea, and after he had plunged repeatedly, they seized him by the hair of the head and drew him close to the ship, when he clung with both hands by the rudder, and, scrambling upon the deck, slunk into a corner and sat down quiet.

The king, pleased with what he saw, said: "What art is there in this?" The physician replied: "Originally he had not experienced the danger of being drowned, and undervalued the safety of being in a ship; in like manner as a person is aware of the preciousness of health, when he is overtaken with the calamity of sickness.

A barely loaf of bread has, O epicure, no relish for thee. That is my mistress who appears so ugly to thy eye.
To the houris, or nymphs of paradise, purgatory would be a hell: and ask the inmates of hell whether purgatory is not paradise.
There is a distinction between the man that folds his mistress in his arms and him whose two eyes are fixed on the door excepting her.