to Sufyān al-Thawrī, “How long will you go on seeking hadith?”
He answered, “What pursuit could be better for me than hadith, prompting me to turn to it? Hadith is the finest branch of worldly knowledge.”

Yaḥyā al-Qaṭṭān narrated: I heard Sufyān say, “The most contemptible of people is the one who seeks worldly gain through acts intended for the Hereafter.”

ʿAbd al-Razzaq reported: “Al-Thawrī called for food and meat and ate it; then he asked for dates and butter and ate those as well. Afterward he rose and said, ‘Treat the African servant well, yet keep him working.’ (1)”

Abū Hishām al-Rifāʿī said: I heard Yaḥyā ibn Yamān transmit from Sufyān that he said, “At times I see a matter about which it is incumbent on me to speak, yet I keep silent—and I end up urinating blood because of it.”

Ibn Mahdī recounted: “We were sitting with al-Thawrī in Mecca when he suddenly stood up and said, ‘The day is doing its work.’”

And Sufyān said, “No one puts his hand into another man’s bowl without thereby abasing himself before him.”

Aḥmad ibn Yūnus remarked: “I heard al-Thawrī—more times than I can count—supplicating, ‘O Allah, keep us safe, keep us safe. O Allah, grant us safety and bless us with well-being in this world and the Hereafter.’”

Yaḥyā ibn Yamān related that Sufyān said, “Nothing is more hateful to me than the company of a Qur’an reciter, and nothing more beloved to me than the company of a young man.”

Abū Hishām reported: Wakīʿ told us, “I heard Sufyān say, ‘Asceticism is not achieved by eating coarse food and wearing rough clothes; true asceticism is to shorten one’s hopes and to await death.’”

Yaḥyā ibn Yamān also related that Sufyān said, “Wealth is the disease of this community, and the scholar is its physician. If the physician himself contracts the disease, when will he ever cure the people?” (2)