“You will leave a memory in this world Through a kind word and a good deed alone. You yourself will die and turn to dust, But the word will live on someone’s lips.”

“If you would speak, speak briefly, So that one word may hold the sense of ten. A word can make you great, While wordiness can turn you into a laughing stock.”

(Yusuf Khass Hajib Balasaguni, an 11th-century Turkic poet and thinker who lived in the cities of Kashgar and Balasagun in the Karakhanid state and wrote the poem “Kutadgu Bilig” (“Blessed Knowledge”), an ethical-didactic and political-philosophical treatise. His work was strongly influenced by the teachings of Ibn Sina and al-Farabi, and by the “Shahnameh” of the great Ferdowsi.)