if you understand something, you don't forgive it, you are the thing itself: forgiveness is for what you don't understand.

We use our parents like recurring dreams, to be entered into when needed.

A simple grateful thought turned heavenwards is the most perfect prayer.

Whatever you're meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.

If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air.

Every child has the capacity to be everything.

Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so.

What's terrible is to pretend that second-rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better.

Things are not quite so simple always as black and white.

You have to be grown up, really grown up, not merely in years, to understand your parents.

There is nothing more boring for an intelligent woman than to spend endless amounts of time with small children.

The lack of power to take joy in outdoor nature is as real a misfortune as the lack of power to take joy in books

Is it not ignorance that we share? A lie takes two. The truth we find alone.

Human beings have neither kindness, nor faith, nor charity beyond what serves to increase the pleasure of the moment.

Private worship excites us for public worship.

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.

Man has an incurable habit of not fulfilling the prophecies of his fellow men.

When God said "Let there be light" he surely must have meant perfectly coherent light.

Black men struggle with masculinity so much. The idea that we must always be strong really presses us all down - it keeps us from growing.

If you know exactly what you're going to do, what's the good in doing it?

In Ramadan, you should eat less and think more.