and what is disliked today is followed by what is loved tomorrow.
• The greatest profit in this world is to occupy your soul at every moment with that which is most fitting for it and most beneficial to it in the Hereafter.
• How can anyone be thought rational who sells Paradise, with all it contains, for the pleasure of a single hour?!
• The knower of Allah leaves this world without ever having had his fill of two things: weeping over himself and praising his Lord.
• When you fear a created being, you grow estranged from him and run away; when you fear the Lord—exalted is He—you find intimacy with Him and draw near.
• If knowledge without practice were useful, Allah—glorified be He—would not have condemned the learned among the People of the Book; and if deeds without sincerity were beneficial, He would not have condemned the hypocrites.
• Repel the fleeting notion; if you do not, it becomes a thought. Repel the thought; if you do not, it becomes a desire. Fight the desire; if you do not, it becomes a firm resolve. If you do not resist the resolve, it becomes an act; and if you do not counter the act with its opposite, it turns into a habit—and then it will be hard for you to break.
• Godfearingness has three (1) degrees: the first is to shield the heart and limbs from sins and prohibitions; the second is to shield them from what is disliked; the third is to shield them from excess and from what does not concern one. The first gives the servant true life, the second grants him health and strength, and the third brings him joy, delight, and happiness.
When the truth remains obscure even as you defend it, the just party finds few who will stand with him.