Letters from rhetoricians

Al-Asma''i said: It was said to Ibn al-Muqaffa: Who disciplined you? He said: Myself; If I see something good from someone else, I go to it, and if I see something ugly, I refuse it. Issa bin Ali invited him to lunch and said: May God bless the prince, I am not a generous person every day. He said: Why? He said: Because I am sick, and sickness is an ugly neighbourhood, preventing me from being wit...