“Everyone has the same God; only people differ.”

The more refined one is, the more unhappy.

When a person expends the least amount of motion on one action, that is grace.

The problem is that we attempt to solve the simplest questions cleverly, thereby rendering them unusually complex. One should seekthe simple solution.

What seems to us serious, significant and important will, in future times, be forgotten or won’t seem important at all.

Man will become better when you show him what he is like.

Just as I shall lie alone in the grave, so, in essence, do I live alone.

Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.

When asked, “Why do you always wear black?”, he said, “I am mourning for my life.

Exquisite nature, daydreams, and music say one thing, real life another.

Not one of our mortal gauges is suitable for evaluating non-existence, for making judgments about that which is not a person.

You will not become a saint through other people’s sins.

The government is not God. It does not have the right to take away that which it can’t return even if it wants to.

Oh, I have now a mania for shortness. Whatever I read – my own or other people’s works – it all seems to me not short enough.

The happy man only feels at ease because the unhappy bear their burden in silence. Without this silence, happiness would be impossible.

He is an emancipated thinker who is not afraid to write foolish things.

I kept thinking how marvellous it would be if I could somehow tear my heart, which felt so heavy, out of my chest.

There is division with people in our lives, as well as political division and religious division.

There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.

The Muslim world, with its history and cultures, and indeed its different interpretations of Islam, is still little known in the West.

They are all different, in terms of history, and the religious compositions of the populations involved.

None of these situations are identical. You cannot take one set of issues from one country and apply it to another.

Separation happens in so many different dimensions. We see it everywhere.

In Islamic belief, knowledge is two-fold. There is that revealed through the Holy Prophet (s.a.s.) and that which man discovers by virtue of his own intellect.

My father insisted that I learnt the Koran and encouraged me to understand the basic traditions and beliefs of Islam but without imposing any particular views. He was an overwhelming personality but open-minded and liberal.