Fatima

“If you were to show a piece of intelligible writing to a reasonable person and say to him: 'do you know its writer?' and he said 'no', he would be speaking truly. But if he said 'yes: its writer is a man living and powerful, hearing and seeing, sound of hand and knowledgeable in the practise of writing, and if I know all this from [the sample] how can I not know him?-he too would be speaking truly. Yet the saying of the one who said 'I do not know him' is more correct and true, for in reality he has not known him. Rather he only knows that intelligible writing requires a living writer, knowing, powerful, hearing, and seeing; yet he does not know the writer himself. Similarly, every creature knows only that this ordered and precisely disposed world requires an arranging, living, knowing, and powerful maker.”
― أبو حامد الغزالي, Al-Ghazali on the Ninety-nine Beautiful Names of God

“His part is mercy, ours is endless praise.”
― Farid Al-Din Attar, The Conference of the Birds

“The deceitful character of the world comes out in the following ways. In the first place, it pretends that it will always remain with you, while, as a matter of fact, it is slipping away from you, moment by moment, and bidding you farewell, like a shadow which seems stationary, but is actually always moving. Again, the world presents itself under the guise of a radiant but immoral sorceress, pretends to be in love with you, fondles you, and then goes off to your enemies, leaving you to die of chagrin and despair. Jesus (upon whom be peace!) saw the world revealed in the form of an ugly old hag. He asked her how many husbands she had possessed; she replied that they were countless. He asked whether they had died or been divorced; she said that she had slain them all. "I marvel", he said, "at the fools who see, what you have done to others, and still desire you." This”
― أبو حامد الغزالي, The Alchemy of Happiness

“Are there not books that make us live more in one single hour than life can make us live in a score of shameful years?”
― Oscar Wilde, Only Dull People Are Brilliant at Breakfast