Character Index | Proverb Index
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| Character Index | Proverb Index |
Townsend version
The woodcutter cut down a Mountain Oak and split it in pieces, making wedges of its own branches for dividing the trunk. The Oak said with a sigh, "I do not care about the blows of the axe aimed at my roots, but I do grieve at being torn in pieces by these wedges made from my own branches."
Moral
Misfortunes springing from ourselves are the hardest to bear.
L'Estrange version (A Tree and A Wedge)
A workman was cutting down a tree to make wedges of it. Well! says the tree, I cannot but be extremely troubled at the thought of what I'm now a doing; and I do not so much complain neither, of the axe that does the execution, as of the man that guides it; but it is my misery that I am to be destroy'd by the fruit of my own body.
Moral
Nothing goes nearer a man in his misfortunes, then to find himself undone by his own folly, or but any way accessory to his own ruine.
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Tom Simondi, All Rights Reserved