• When the heart is nourished by remembrance, watered with reflection, and purged of corruption, it beholds wonders and is granted wisdom.
• Not everyone who lays claim to knowledge and wisdom truly possesses them. The genuine people of knowledge and wisdom are those who enliven their hearts by putting passion to death; but whoever lets his heart die and revives his passions carries knowledge and wisdom only as borrowed finery upon his tongue.
• A heart is laid waste by complacent security and heedlessness, and it is built up by awe and remembrance.
• When hearts grow ascetic toward the banquet tables of this world, they take their seats at the banquet tables of the Hereafter among those who have been invited; but when they are satisfied with the tables of this world, those other tables slip away from them.
• Longing for Allah and the meeting with Him is a breeze that wafts over the heart, cooling the searing heat of worldly life.
• Whoever lodges his heart with his Lord finds tranquillity and rest; whoever releases it among people is shaken by turmoil and intense anxiety.
• The love of Allah will not enter a heart that harbors love of the world—no more than a camel can pass through the eye of a needle.
• When Allah loves a servant, He fashions him for Himself, chooses him for His love, and singles him out for His worship: He occupies the servant’s concerns with Himself, his tongue with His remembrance, and his limbs with His service.
• The heart falls ill just as the body does, and its cure is repentance and a regimen of abstinence. It rusts as a mirror rusts, and its polish is remembrance. It becomes bare as the body becomes bare, and its adornment is godfearingness. It hungers and thirsts as the body hungers and thirsts, and its food and drink are knowledge, love, reliance, turning back, and service.
• Beware of being heedless of the One who has set a fixed term for your life, and an appointed span for your days and breaths;