94 – From the sayings of the sages and the righteous.

Ibn Abī al-Dunyā narrated to us: It has reached me that a certain king once said to one of the wise:

“How astonishing it is that someone who knows Allah and His majesty can oppose His command and violate His sanctity!”

The sage replied, “By letting vigilance slip, by stretching the span of wishful hope, and by those words: ‘perhaps,’ ‘soon,’ and ‘maybe.’”

The king asked, “Then by what can one seek protection from passion, when it has been embedded in fragile bodies, and in every limb desire finds a place and a home?”

The sage answered, “Passion is the offspring of thought, and the companion of every thought is a lesson. … A person restrains his desires through reflection, fences them in at the halter of aggression, and drives away the evil of his thinking by ⦗91⦘ embracing patience in the face of his desire, hoping for Allah’s reward for obedience and fearing His punishment for disobedience.”