The son of a faqih said to his father: ‘These heart-ravishing words of moralists make no impression upon me because I do not see that their actions are in conformity with their speeches.’

They teach people to abandon the world
But themselves accumulate silver and corn.
A scholar who only preaches and nothing more
Will not impress anyone when he speaks.
He is a scholar who commits no evil,
Not he who speaks to men but acts not himself.

A man, professing to be a hermit in the desert of Syria, attended for years to his devotions and subsisted on the leaves of trees.

Despite the abundant admonitions of the most illustrious Sheikh Abulfaraj Ben Juzi to shun musical entertainments and to prefer solitude and retirement, the budding of my youth overcame me, my sensual desires were excited so that, unable to resist them, I walked some steps contrary to the opinion of my tutor, enjoying myself in musical amusements and convivial meetings. When the advice of my sheikh occurred to my mind, I said:

‘If the qazi were sitting with us, he would clap his hands.
If the muhtasib were bibbing wine, he would excuse a drunkard.’

One asked the man who had lost his son:

‘O noble and intelligent old man!
As thou hast smelt the odour of his garment from Egypt
Why hast thou not seen him in the well of Canaan?’

He replied:

‘My state is that of leaping lightning.
One moment it appears and at another vanishes.
I am sometimes sitting in high heaven.
Sometimes I cannot see the back of my foot.
Were a dervish always to remain in that state

One of the devotees of Mount Lebanon, whose piety was famed in the Arab country and his miracles well known, entered the cathedral mosque of Damascus and was performing his purificatory ablution on the edge

One of my friends complained of the unpropitious times, telling me that he had a slender income, a large family, without strength to bear the load of poverty and had often entertained the idea to emigrate to another country so that no matter how he made a living no one might become aware of his good or ill luck.

Many a man slept hungry and no one knew who he was.
Many a man was at the point of death and no one wept for him.

A vezier, who had been removed from his post, entered the circle of dervishes and the blessing of their society took such effect upon him that he became contented in his mind. When the king was again favourably disposed towards him and ordered him to resume his office, he refused and said: "Retirement is better than occupation."

Those who have sat down in the corner of safety
Have bound the teeth of dogs and tongues of men.
They tore the paper up and broke the pen
And are saved from the hands and tongues of slanderers.

It is narrated that one of the kings of Persia had stretched forth
his tyrannical hand to the possessions of his subjects and had begun
to oppress them so violently that in consequence of his fraudulent
extortions they dispersed in the world and chose exile on account of
the affliction entailed by his violence. When the population had
diminished, the prosperity of the country suffered, the treasury
remained empty and on every side enemies committed violence.

Who desires succour in the day of calamity,

Higher far,
Upward, into the pure realm,
Over sun or star,
Over the flickering Dæmon film,
Thou must mount for love,—
Into vision which all form
In one only form dissolves;
In a region where the wheel,
On which all beings ride,
Visibly revolves;
Where the starred eternal worm
Girds the world with bound and term;
Where unlike things are like,
When good and ill,
And joy and moan,
Melt into one.
There Past, Present, Future, shoot
Triple blossoms from one root
Substances at base divided
In their summits are united,

Her little bark on Life's wide Ocean tossed,
In the unequal struggle soon was lost,
Severe its conflict! Much alas it bore,
Then sunk beneath the storm and rose no more.
But when th' Archangels clarion shall sound,
And thunder "LIFE" through all the vast profound,
Her renovated vessel will be seen,
Transcendent floating on the stream!
The joyful ensigns waving in the air!
The tides propitious and the zephyrs fair,
Till safe within the destined Port of Bliss,
The anchor drops in everlasting PEACE.