The greatest products of architecture are less the works of individuals than of society; rather the offspring of a nation's effort, than the inspired flash of a man of genius.
...there is in life an element of elfin coincidence which people reckoning on the prosaic may perpetually miss. As it has been well expressed in the paradox of Poe, wisdom should reason on the unforeseen.
Anyone who refuses to marry is shrinking his farmwork, wasting the seed, and leaving idle the appropiate tools created by God; he sins against the purpose of creation and wisdom visible in the evidence of natural structure. The man who refuses to marry has severed a chain of being, a previously unbroken chain linking his own existence to that of Adam.
A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and, in order to divert himself, having no love in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest forms of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal. And it all comes from lying - lying to others and to yourself.
The one who admonishes his brother secretly, he has advised sincerely and has honored him. If he does it outwardly (among others) then he has dishonored and shamed him.
I complained to Waki' about the weakness of my memorisation,
So he instructed me to abandon disobedience;
He informed me that knowledge is a light,
And the light of Allah is not given to a sinner.
The great pagan world of which Egypt and Greece were the last living termsonce had a vast and perhaps perfect science of itsown, a science in terms of life. In our era this science crumbled into magic and charlatanry. But even wisdom crumbles.