In addition to his poems, Saadi’s philosophical quotations are broadly noted, for example, a well-known favorite is, "I fear God, and next to God I chiefly fear him who fears Him not." In his recent letter to Iran, President Barack Obama quoted Saadi: "The children of Adam are limbs to each other, having been created of one essence."
“The Grass of God's Garden”
In the first quatrain of his versanelle, “The Grass of God’s Garden,” Saadi’s speaker sees a lush bunch of “fresh roses” on a mound of ordinary grass. The speaker arrogantly questions the propriety of lowly grass having such close congress with the more grandiose flowers.
In the second quatrain, the grass answers the supercilious speaker, effectively humbling him in the process. The grass first demands that the speaker stop talking, and then it declaims, “Companionship does not obliterate nobility.” The speaking grass then admits that it has “no beauty, color, and perfume.” However, more important than possession of any physical quality, the grass avers, is that its value originates and is sustained by the fact that grass is “of God’s garden.”
“On Friends and Enemies”
In his six-line versanelle, the poet creates a speaker who offers an unusual attitude toward the term “enemy.” While the prevailing attitude dictates the avoidance of one’s enemies, this speaker has discovered the importance of having someone to can “make [him] aware of [his] defects.”
The speaker’s claims, at first, seem paradoxical, when he says, “I am displeased with the company of friends,” but the reason for this displeasure is that to his friends his “bad qualities appear to be good.” They even mistakenly accept his “faults as virtues.” The speaker does not want to be told lies about his qualities; he realizes that if he is not aware of his faults, he will not be able to correct them. Therefore, he wants to know, “where is the bold and quick enemy / To make me aware of my defects?”
“Silence”
In the final versanelle titled “Silence,” the message can be summarized as the often-quoted adage attributed to Abraham Lincoln, “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt.”
The speaker determines that “the ignorant man[’s]” best friend is silence: “When you are not possessed of perfection or excellence, / It is better that you keep your tongue within your mouth.” The speaker asserts that man’s tongue often brings “disgrace upon men.” He likens talk that is without substance to a “nut without a kernel.”
Colorfully and scathingly accurate, the speaker notes that a human being cannot teach an animal “to speak,” but a human being can learn “how to be silent” from the animal. He cleverly drives the idea home by advising the ignorant to buck up and “[e]ither adorn thy speech with the intelligence of a man, / Or sit in silence like a dumb animal.”
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