Hitopadesha

"Let a man mark the quick increase of a white ant’s nest, and suffer no day to pass unfruitful in study, charity, and work."

"He whose days pass without imparting and enjoying, is like the bellows of a smith: he breathes indeed, but he does not live."

"The natural disposition is hard to overcome. If you make a dog a king, will he not still gnaw leather (literally, gnaw his shoe-strap)."

"In disuse, knowledge is poison. In indigestion, food is poison."

"In the sandal-trees are serpents. In the waters are lotuses, but alligators also. In our enjoyments are envious spies. No pleasures are unimpeded."

"A work prospers through endeavors, not through vows. The fawn runs not into the mouth of a sleeping lion."

"Riches in their acquisition bring pain and suffering; in their loss, manifold trouble and sorrow; in their possession, a wild intoxication. How can we say that they confer happiness?"

"Inasmuch as a child, seated upon a throne, has no strength, his subjects will not fight for him. Who would, in any case, fight for another, when he is not in condition to do anything for himself?"

"A wise man should think upon knowledge as if he were undecaying and immortal. He should practise duty as if he were seized by the hair of his head by death."

"The favor of the ruler may confer fortune, but it does not bestow nobility of birth. The blackness of the poison Kalakuta does not blanch through coming in contact with Siva."

"Only the foolish ask, Is this one of us, or an outside person? To the noble, the whole world is a family."

"They whose eating is solely for the sustaining of life, whose cohabitation is but for the sake of offspring, whose speech is only for the utterance of truth, surmount difficulties."