How excellent, for Allah’s sake, is grey hair—
a preacher and counsellor, if only the counselled would beware. (1)
Yet the young man insists on following passion,
though the way of truth lies clear before his eyes.
So lift your sight toward maidens
whose dowry is righteous deeds alone;
No one will behold the fair houri within her chamber
save a man whose scales of good deeds are heavy.
Whoever fears Allah—it is he
to whom the truly profitable bargain is presented.
Set out, then, at dawn; in the religion there is no riddle,
and hasten toward that for which you are already bound. (2)

Abū Haffān once requested that he recite the poem which opens:
“Do not forget Laylā, nor exult over Hind.” (3)
When he finished, Abū Haffān fell in prostration before him.
Abū Nuwās said, “By Allah, I shall not speak to you for a while.”
“That saddened me,” he relates, “but when I rose to leave he asked, ‘When shall I see you again?’
I replied, ‘Did you not swear an oath?’
He said, ‘Life is too short to allow estrangement.’

Among his choicest verse are the lines:
How many a noble face lies mingled with the dust,
how much delicate beauty beneath the soil!
How much resolve, how much valor is buried there,
how many a sound judgment now wrapped in earth.
So tell the neighbour of your dwelling: you are a traveller
bound for a journey whose station is distant and far.
I see every living soul doomed to perish, the son of one who perished before him,
and men of ancient lineage numbered among the dead.
When a discerning man puts this world to the test,
it reveals itself as an enemy in the garb of a friend. (4)

He also said:
Do not be greedy, for abasement lies in greed,
whereas honour is in forbearance, not in recklessness and folly.
And say to the one who delights—out of stupidity—in wandering:
If you but knew what lies in that wandering, you would never wander.
Wandering corrupts religion, diminishes the mind,
and ruins one’s reputation—so take heed. (5)

Abū al-ʿAtāhiyah, al-Qāsim ibn Ismāʿīl, once sat on a bookseller’s bench and wrote on the back of a notebook these lines:
“O wonder! How can the Lord be disobeyed,
or how can the denier deny Him?”