On the stately pillars of affection, dread of sin, benevolence, benignity and truth is raised the noble edifice of character. (983)
Even men of acute intellect are but mere wood, if they lack courtesy divine. (997)
How beguiling and baffling are the looks of my fair one! When I look on her, she bends her gaze down. When I turn away, she looks on me and breaks into a tender and artful smile. (1094)
Oh, how my malady of love begins, grows and becomes intense, like a flower that is a bud in the morning, that grows all day long and that blows into a blossom towards the close of the eve! (1227)
If the thought is lofty, it is clothed in equally lofty and poetic words in the ‘Kural'. The particular form of couplet that Tiruvalluvar chose as his medium of expression, has elicited praise from all. His couplets are at once compact and precise, scintillating in their finish like cut diamonds. Dr. G. U. Pope remarks that something of the same kind is found in Greek epigrams, in Martial and Latin elegiac verse. “There is a beauty in the periodic character of the verses that reminds the reader of the happiest efforts of Propertius”. His similes and metaphors are most appropriate and enjoyable. They have a telling effect on the reader: "every simile illustrates and elevates the subject.” To quote one example:
