People count with self-satisfaction the number of times they have recited the name of God on their prayer beads, but they keep no beads for reckoning the number of idle words they speak.
Love for God is the farthest reach of all stations, the sun of the highest degrees, and there is no station after that of love, except its fruit and its consequences.
Whatever the situation may be, in the recollection of death there is reward and merit. For even the man engrossed in the world benefits from it by acquiring an aversion to this world, since it spoils his contentment and the fullness of his pleasure; and everything which spoils for man his pleasures and his appetites is one of the means of deliverance.
O youth.......be assured that knowledge alone does not strengthen the hand......Though a man read a hundred thousand scientific questions and understood them or learned them, but did not work with them---They do not benefit him except by working.....Knowledge is the tree, and working is its fruit; and though you studied a hundred years and assembled a thousand books, you would not be prepared for the mercy of Allah the Exalted except by working.
There are two kinds of Riya - Showing off-Ostentation ie pure ostentation and adulterated ostention. In pure ostentation "Riya" a man does a good deed only for worldly benefit. In Adulterated ostentation, a man does a good deed with the intention of reaping the benefits of the world as well as of the Hereafter.
Men have such a good opinion of themselves, of their mental superiority and intellectual depth; they believe themselves so skilled in discerning the true from the false, the path of safety from those of error, that they should be forbidden as much as possible the perusal of philosophic writings.
Man's nature is made up of four elements, which produce in him four attributes, namely, the beastly, the brutal, the satanic, and the divine. In man there is something of the pig, the dog, the devil, and the saint.
If the first inward thought is not warded off, it will generate a desire, then the desire will generate a wish, and the wish will generate an intention, and the intention will generate the action, and the action will result in ruin and divine wrath. So evil must be cut off at its root, which is when it is simply a thought that crosses the mind, from which all the other things follow on.
In God, there is no sorrow or suffering or affliction. If you want to be free of all affliction and suffering, hold fast to God, and turn wholly to Him, and to no one else. Indeed, all your suffering comes from this: that you do not turn toward God and no one else.
To completely trust in Allah is to be like a child who knows deeply that even if he does not call for the mother, the mother is totally aware of his condition and is looking after him.
If the world had two gods, it would surely go to ruin-this is the first premise. Now it is known that it has not gone to ruin-this is the second premise. From these premises the conclusion must of necessity follow, that is, the denial of two gods.