Among Ibn ʿUyaynah’s aphorisms he said, “Asceticism is patience and the constant expectation of death.”

He also said, “Knowledge—when it does not benefit you—will only harm you.”

ʿUthmān ibn Zāʾidah related: “I asked Sufyān al-Thawrī, ‘From whom should we take narration?’ He replied, ‘Turn to Ibn ʿUyaynah and to Zāʾidah.’”

Nuʿaym ibn Ḥammād said, “I never saw anyone who could gather scattered material as comprehensively as Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah.”

ʿAlī ibn Naṣr al-Jahḍamī reported: Shuʿbah ibn al-Ḥajjāj told us, “I saw Ibn ʿUyaynah when he was still a boy, carrying long wooden tablets while sitting with ʿAmr ibn Dīnār, and there was a ring—or, he said, a pendant—in his ear (1).”

Ibn al-Madīnī said: “I heard Ibn ʿUyaynah remark, ‘I kept company with ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Jazarī for two years, and he would say to the people of his town, “Look at this lad who questions me while you do not.”’”

Dhuʾayb ibn ʿImāmah al-Sahmī said: “I heard Ibn ʿUyaynah say, ‘I heard from Ṣāliḥ, the freedman of al-Tawʾamah, such-and-such an abundance’—and he gestured with his hands to show how much—‘I listened to him while his saliva was dripping.’”

ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī Ḥātim commented, “Yet we know of nothing he actually transmitted from him; he was extremely critical in evaluating narrators.”

ʿAlī said: “I heard Sufyān say, ‘ʿAmr ibn Dīnār was older than al-Zuhrī; he heard hadith from Jābir, whereas al-Zuhrī did not hear from him.’”