248 – Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq al-Thaqafī narrated to me; he said: A sage once remarked:

“Days are arrows, and people are the targets. Every day, Time lets fly its shafts at you; with its nights and days it riddles you, until it has consumed every part of you. How long can your soundness last while the days assail you and the nights race through your body? Were the veil lifted so you could see what the days have already diminished in you, and the ruin they are even now working on what remains of you, ⦗121⦘ you would recoil from every new day that dawns and find the passing of the hours unbearably heavy. Yet the planning of Allah lies beyond all human reckoning. It is only because people forget the lurking perils of this world that they find any sweetness in it—whereas, to the discerning sage who kneads it thoroughly, it is more bitter than colocynth. It is smaller than anything that can still be called ‘little.’ The mere outwardness of its deeds suffices to expose its defects, and the marvels it produces outstrip what any preacher can encompass. We beg Allah to grant us right guidance to what is true.”