[108]
[108] See also Saadi's aphorisms on precept and practice,
_ante_, p. 47.
If a word spoken in time be worth one piece of money, silence in its
place is worth two.[109]
[109] Here we have a variant of Thomas Carlyle's favourite
maxim, "Speech is silvern; silence is golden."
Silence is the fence round wisdom.[110]
[110] "Nothing is so good for an ignorant man as silence; and
if he were sensible of this he would not be
ignorant."--_Saadi_.
A saying ascribed to Esop has been frequently cited with admiration. The
sage Chilo asked Esop what God was doing, and he answered that he was
"depressing the proud and exalting the humble." A parallel to this is
presented in the answer of Rabbi Jose to a woman who asked him what God
had been doing since the creation: "He makes ladders on which he causes
the poor to ascend and the rich to descend," in other words, exalts the
lowly and humbles the haughty.
* * * * *
The lucid explanation of the expression, "I, God, am a jealous God,"
given by a Rabbi, has been thus elegantly translated by Coleridge:[111]
[111] _The Friend_, ed. 1850, vol. ii, p. 249.
"Your God," said a heathen philosopher to a Hebrew Rabbi, "in his Book
calls himself a jealous God, who can endure no other god besides
himself, and on all occasions makes manifest his abhorrence of idolatry.
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