Rhymed Observations

Listen to the poem in English

Samuel Hoffenstein — Original Text

The rights of each are the only rights of all.
Eve grinned before the fall.
The malevolent tyrant destroys; the benevolent tyrant humiliates.
Man proposes; woman affiliates.
Wherever the worm turns, he is still a worm.
Power never serves too brief a term.
Where there are willing masters there are willing slaves.
Where there are mass men there are mass graves.
Only the obligations of the strong assure the rights of the weak.
Envy is the mistress of the meek.
Marriages made in Heaven are not exported.
A fool and his money are soon courted.
When the ox has wings, the eagle will draw the cart.
The taste of another’s luck is always tart.
Who shouts of his labor covets another’s yield.
What God confided to the clergy has never been revealed.
A wrong to one outlaws the State.
Free to worship still means free to hate.
Where the mighty swarm, God is hidden.
Joy is the most forbidden.Real wealth is the soul in repose.
Thorns do not impede the rose.
Where one is nothing, all are nothing.
Beware of a dog and a saviour frothing.
“No” is a giant’s word.
Parents should be seen, but children heard.
The body cannot give itself pleasure.
Work is the fig-leaf of leisure.
Who governs himself cheats the State.
Faith condones, Courage despises, Fate.
The wages of sin are high.
The half-truth is the cancer of the lie.
Every man’s poverty adds to the demagogue’s wealth.
Few reach high office save by stealth.
The lying servant becomes the brutal master.
Only One God is not made of plaster.
No taxation without misrepresentation.
Geography never made a nation.
Who robs Peter will never pay Paul.
The thirst of the great is the drink of the small.
The wealth of the world will be redistributed with its brains.
To starve more slowly, starve on another’s gains.
No man should be called common except by his cook.
We need more cooks.
No man is fit, by law or wit, or custom, suffrage or intent, or hazard, need or accident, to rule another than himself, save from the gallows or the shelf.
Wisdom bears buds, Virtue, blossoms, Force, fruit. 
On the hog mind, assurance is the snoot.
To a woman, experience means love; to a man, traffic tickets.
Simple Saint Peter stays outside the wickets, know, as he does, by his own belief, the stinkweed has become immortal leaf, and the starved mind and heart eternal rickets.
So long – and yet, so short for this life’s grievance and the snort.

Who robs Peter will never pay Paul: refers to an old saying, “Robbing Peter to pay Paul,” i.e., to go into debt a second time to pay a first debt; to use money other than one’s own to pay a debt.