Words of Truth, Vol. II, Saying 162

I was once given a partridge when I was a child. This partridge loved the sound of the tanbour. Whenever I picked up the instrument, she would come and sit beside me and, after a while, become drunk with music. She would then start singing and gripping my hand and pecking at it. At night, she would sleep on a shelf in my room. One early morning when I wanted to go back to sleep (after having finished my dawn prayer), she started to sing. I hushed her to stop. She immediately looked down and, saddened, became silent. From then on, whenever she woke up early in the morning she would sit on the edge of my bed, gently pull on my blanket and chirp a little. If I didn’t react after a few moments, she would understand that I was asleep and would go away. Otherwise, I would say: “Mmmh, what a lovely voice,” and she would begin to sing.

Words of Truth, Vol. I, Saying 1944

Ethics are the very essence of the soul’s nobility, which is why it is necessary to understand ethical values. A few years ago, I was invited to a friend’s house along with several other individuals, one of whom was a well-respected man by the name of “K.” During the course of the evening, someone brought “K” a tanbour and he played a few dull and incomplete melodies. Another gentlemen by the name of “M,” who was aware of my reputation as a tanbour player, insisted that I play as well. To avoid embarrassing “K,” I refused to play. Despite the fact that “K” thought I did not dare to play in front of him, I refrained from playing, for had he heard my tanbour he would certainly have felt humiliated. “How easy it is to become learned, how difficult to become humane.”