Wealth & Money Quote by Sa'Di

Admiration lands where it’s easiest: on the peacock’s spectacle, not on the parts that have to touch the ground. Sa’di’s line works because it weaponizes a gorgeous image against the vanity it seems to praise. The “rich and variegated plumage” is public-facing excellence, the curated surface that invites applause. The “ugly feet” are the private ledger: origins, flaws, compromises, the unphotogenic mechanics of how a life is actually lived. While the crowd “cries up” the plumage, the peacock blushes, not from pride but from a humiliating self-awareness. That reversal is the sting. Public praise doesn’t necessarily heal private shame; it can sharpen it.

Sa’di, writing in the moral and courtly milieu of 13th-century Persia, knew how status operates: reputations are built in salons and courts, where beauty, eloquence, and display travel faster than truth. The peacock becomes an emblem for anyone elevated by audience consensus - the celebrated official, the pious showman, the poet himself - who suspects the acclaim is partially unearned or distracts from something unworthy underneath. The poem’s subtext is less “be humble” than “understand the asymmetry between what people reward and what you actually live with.”

There’s also a quiet social critique. The crowd is complicit, training attention on ornament and then acting surprised when the ornamental class is hollowed out by insecurity. Sa’di makes the peacock’s shame a mirror: the problem isn’t only vanity; it’s the economy of admiration that produces it.