• A servant can honor his own soul in no way better than by humiliating it, can dignify it in no way better than by humbling it, and can give it rest in no way better than by making it toil. As it was said:
I shall weary my soul, or else I may find repose;
for the soul’s abasement lies in its nobility. (1)
Likewise, he cannot sate it as he does by starving it, secure it as he does by alarming it, befriend it as he does by estranging it from all that is not its Fashioner and Creator, nor give it life as he does by mortifying it; for it has also been said:
The death of souls is their life;
whoever wishes to live must die. (2)

• The draught of passion is sweet, yet it leaves a choking thirst.

• Whoever remembers how the snare strangles will find it easy to forsake the baited grain.

• O you entangled in the net of desire—one flicker of resolve and the web is torn.

• The decree must inevitably take effect; so incline toward peaceful surrender.

• To Allah belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth; He asked you for a single grain on loan, and you withheld it! He created seven seas, and wanted from you but one tear, yet your eye refused to shed it!

• An unguarded gaze engraves the image of what is seen upon the heart. Yet the heart is a Kaaba, and the One worshipped will not agree to idols jostling for space within it.

• The delights of this world are like a lowly, dark woman who has prevailed over you, while the wide-eyed maidens of Paradise marvel at your wretched preference for her over them; but when the whirlwind of desire is stirred, it casts sand into the eye