“Don’t ever be afraid of giving. Give. Give of your time, your forgiveness, your understanding, your love. Give of your money. Give to the creation, and you’ll be given by the Creator. Be generous, and the Most Generous will be generous with you.”

If you’re having trouble waking up for fajr, set your alarm to play Quran. It works!

If you want the love of the people, stop running after it. The more you chase it, the more it escapes you. Love doesn’t come from the people. It comes from God.

In his mercy, He sent the storm itself to make us seek help. And then knowing that we’re likely to get the wrong answer, He gives us a multiple choice exam with only one option to choose from: the correct answer. The hardship itself is ease.

In any nation, the hypocrites do not become apparent except during times of fitnah (severe tests and hardships).

This is the one and only reason why I was created. And this is the most essential realization, as it defines everything else I do or believe. It defines all things around me, and everything I experience in life.

I think we all carry within us different versions of ourselves. Our true, greatest, most honest versions of ourselves can either be developed and nourished, or it can remain dead from neglect.

We fail because when Allah gives us these blessings, we unwittingly turn them into false idols in the heart.

The Prophets! And they were the closest to Allah. Every hardship is good for you-if it brings you closer to Him!

When we can’t marry the person we had in mind, our inability to look beyond may even blind sight us from someone who is in fact better for us.

This world isn’t perfect. That means it isn’t perfectly good; but it isn’t perfectly bad, either. The ease comes with the hardship. Shift the focus of what you see, and your experience of this life will change.

My worth as a human being is measured on a higher scale: a scale of righteousness and piety. And my purpose in life-despite what fashion magazines say-is something more sublime than just looking good for men.

You’ve been given status today, but never forget where you came from. You came from dirt and will return to dirt. You will be on that day as you began: just you and Him.

Don’t expect your spouse to be perfect. He/she is only the dunya version of themselves. Their ‘perfect’ version is saved for jennah.

Before anything can break your heart, it must first own your heart. Stop handing your heart to dunya-it’ll stop breaking it.

We will suffer the moment we take our eyes off the End and get lost in the means.

Many years ago, our father Ibrahim (AS) made a choice. He loved his son. But He loved God more.

Be demonstrative and generous in your praise of those you admire.

If some great catastrophe is not announced every morning, we feel a certain void. Nothing in the paper today, we sigh.

Be generous before you are just. Do not temper mercy with justice.

A generous spirit prefers that his country should be poor, and weak, and of no account, but free, rather than powerful, prosperous, and enslaved.

If the gentleman has ability, he is magnanimous, generous, tolerant, and straightforward, through which he opens the way to instruct others.

It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent.

Think of yourself as a role model for others-showing that you can be kind, generous, loving, and rich!

But the Princeton fellowship was somewhat more generous, since I had not actually won the Putnam competition… Thus Princeton became the choice for my graduate study location.