249 – Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq narrated to me; he said: People once asked a sage, “Describe this world to us, and the length of our stay in it.” He replied:

“The world is nothing but the moment it takes for your eyelid to fall and rise again. Whatever has already passed is beyond your reach, and whatever has not yet come you know nothing about. Time is a single oncoming day whose night conducts its funeral, whose very hours fold it away. Its events let fly their shafts at a human being, leaving him ever changed and diminished. Time has been charged with scattering gatherings, sundering cohesion, and transferring power from one people to another. Hope is long, life is short, and to Allah all matters return.”

Mahmūd al-Warrāq recited to me:
A man’s whole world is but his soul; once he is gone, his world is gone.
It passes with his passing, then lives in those who still hold on. ⦗122⦘
What kind of nurse, who with death’s cup weans the child she once had fed?
While tenderly fostering his good, she ruins what she had repaired.