Today I planted carnations, in the little pot, on my balcony overlooking the sea...

And I sat contemplating my carnations, looking with the eye of my imagination toward their near tomorrow — the day these carnations bud and light the darkness of my narrow balcony...

And I shall be alone with them, sipping my coffee, gazing through them at the waves of the sea breaking coquettishly on the age-old rocks beneath our house!

I heard them murmuring in my ear — these carnations not yet born — that they would inspire in me beautiful, limpid thoughts, with which my imagination has long been astir, but which still lie buried there in turmoil and perplexity!!

... Tomorrow spring will come, and from atop its slender stems a red carnation will look out at me, eyeing me with warmth and temptation, and teaching my heart strength and heat and revolt!

... But this fire in my blood will subside the day the white carnation opens, turning me back from my straying... and teaching my heart the purity and the chastity that know neither desire nor revolt...

... And when spring dies, and its colors and its perfumes vanish with it, my red carnation will wither and die, and nothing will remain in the pot but my white carnation, lifting its head proudly to the sky — behind it the blue sea and its white waves.

The Story of the Pearls

Hind came complaining to her mother —

glory to Him who joined the two luminaries!

She said to her: “This morning light

came to me, and kissed me twice,

and fled; and when the dusk saw me,

it granted me two locks of its hair,

and melted some of its color into liquid

and with it lined my two eyes with kohl.

And I knew not, mother — nay, it embraced me

and cast upon my smiling lips two stars.

So I hid my face; but it,

toward my breast, mother, stretched out two hands —

and oh, my astonishment, when I opened my eyes

and beheld at my breast two pomegranates!

And the bough kept at me until it bent

and bowed at my feet in worship, twice;

and upon its head were two roses,

and it offered me those two roses.

And I grew afraid of the bough when its leaves

murmured two words in my ear,

so I went to the sea for refreshment,

and its wind carried me on two waves.

It is the sea, mother — how many a youth

lies drowned, and how many a youth hangs between and between!

So here I am, complaining of them all to you:

by God, mother — what do you say?”

And her mother said, laughing,

swaying with wonder in two mantles:

“I know them, one by one,

and what you have tasted, I have tasted — twice!”

• The Statue of Liberty ought not to be made of iron, for iron reminds you of the chains for whose breaking that statue was raised.

• Grudges are the serpents of the breast.

• Heroes, with the ropes of their gallows, string the chords of their imagination on the plains of glory.

• Charlotte Corday, slayer of the French tyrant Marat, showed great courage upon the guillotine, and one of the great men of the Revolution said of her: “This woman is killing us, but she teaches us how we ought to die. From such a woman let man take a lesson.”

• Beauty without virtue is like a flower without fragrance. — Socrates

• In harming your enemy, you have placed yourself beneath him; in taking revenge upon him, you have made yourself his equal; and in forgiving him, you have risen far above him...

• The wise man is he who carries his wisdom as he carries his watch — not for display, but for personal use.

• We were created with two eyes and one mouth, that we might see twice as much as we speak.

• We — men and women — are both in one boat upon a raging sea, and all that we need is faithfulness to one another.

• The wise woman is she who does not tell people what she does, yet refuses to do any deed that cannot be spoken of among people!