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Back You are here: Home Eternal Words Nahj al-Balaghah Sayings saying - 21 to 40

saying - 21 to 40

21. Imam Ali ibn Aba Talib, peace be upon him said the following: The consequence of fear is disappointment and of bashfulness is frustration. Opportunity passes away like the cloud. Therefore, make use of good opportunities.

22. Imam Ali ibn Aba Talib, peace be upon him said the following: We have a right. If it is granted to us, that is good; otherwise, we will ride on the hind of the camel even though the night journey may be long.

Sayyid ar-Razi says the following: “This is a very fine and eloquent expression. It means that if we are not allowed to enjoy our right, we will be regarded as humble. This sense comes out from this expression because on the rear part of the camel only slaves, prisoners or other people of this type used to ride.”

23. Imam Ali ibn Aba Talib, peace be upon him said the following: If the deeds of someone accord (him) a back status, he cannot be given a front status simply on account of his lineage.

24. Imam Ali ibn Aba Talib, peace be upon him said the following: To render relief to the grief-stricken and to provide comfort in hardship means the atonement of great sins.

25. Imam Ali ibn Aba Talib, peace be upon him said the following: O son of Adam! When you see that your Lord, the Glorified One, bestows His favors on you while you are disobeying Him, you should fear Him.

26. Imam Ali ibn Aba Talib, peace be upon him said the following: Whenever a person conceals a thing in his heart, it manifests itself through unintentional words from his tongue and (in) the expressions of his face.

27. Imam Ali ibn Aba Talib, peace be upon him said the following: Keep walking in your sickness as long as you can.

28. Imam Ali ibn Aba Talib, peace be upon him said the following: The best part of moderation is to conceal it.

29. Imam Ali ibn Aba Talib, peace be upon him said the following: When you are running away from the world and death is approaching, there is no question of delay in the encounter.

30. Imam Ali ibn Aba Talib, peace be upon him said the following: Fear! Fear! By Allah, He has hidden your sins, so much so that it is as though He has forgiven them!

Faith, Unbelief, Doubt and Their Pillars

31. Imam Ali ibn Aba Talib, peace be upon him, was asked once about faith. He said the following: “Faith stands on four pillars: endurance, conviction, justice and jihad.
Endurance, again, has four aspects: eagerness, fear, abstention (from the allurements of the world) and anticipation (of death). So, whoever is eager for Paradise will ignore his passions; whoever fears the Fire (of Hell) will refrain from committing prohibited deeds; whoever abstains from the world takes hardships lightly, and whoever anticipates death will hasten towards good deeds.
Conviction, also, has four aspects: prudent perception, intelligence and understanding, drawing lessons from instructive things and following the precedents of past people. So, whoever perceives with prudence, wise knowledge will be manifest to him, and to whomsoever wise knowledge becomes manifest he appreciates instructive objectives, and whoever appreciates instructive objectives is just like past people.
Justice also has four aspects: keen understanding, deep knowledge, a good power of decision and firm forbearance. Therefore, whoever understands comes to acquire the depth of knowledge; whoever acquires the depth of knowledge drinks from the spring of Judgment, and whoever exercises forbearance never commits evil actions in his affairs and leads a praiseworthy life among the people.
Jihad, also, has four aspects: enjoining others to do good, keeping away others from doing evil, fighting (in the way of Allah) sincerely and firmly on all occasions and detesting anyone who is vicious.
So, whoever asks others to do good provides strength to the believers; whoever dissuades others from committing evil humiliates the unbelievers; whoever fights sincerely on all occasions carries out all his obligations, and whoever detests the vicious and becomes angry for the sake of Allah, then Allah will be angry in favor of him and will keep him pleased on the Day of Judgment.
Unbelief stands on four pillars: hankering after whims, quarreling with others, deviating from the truth and dissenting. So, whoever hankers after whims does not incline towards right; whoever quarrels much on account of ignorance remains permanently blinded from what is right; whoever deviates from the truth, for him good becomes evil and evil becomes good and he remains intoxicated with misguidance, and whoever makes a breach (with Allah and His Messenger), his path becomes difficult, his affairs become complicated and his way of escape becomes narrow.
Doubt has also four aspects: irrationality, fear, wavering and undue submission to everything. So, whoever adopts irrationality as his way of life, for him there is no dawn after the night; whoever is afraid of what befalls him has to run on his heels; whoever wavers in doubt, the satans trample upon him with their feet, and whoever submits to the destruction of this and the next world succumbs to it.

Sayyid ar-Razi says the following: “We have left out the remaining portion of this saying for fear of length and for being outside the purpose of this chapter.”

32. Imam Ali ibn Aba Talib, peace be upon him said: The doer of good is better than the good itself, and the doer of evil is worse than the evil itself.

33. Imam Ali ibn Aba Talib, peace be upon him said the following: Be generous but not extravagant; be thrifty but not stingy.

34. Imam Ali ibn Aba Talib, peace be upon him said the following: The best of riches is the abandonment of desires.

35. Imam Ali ibn Aba Talib, peace be upon him said the following: If someone is quick in saying about people what they dislike, they will speak about him that with which they have no knowledge.

36. Imam Ali ibn Aba Talib, peace be upon him said the following: Whoever prolongs his desire ruins his actions.

37. Once Imam Ali ibn Aba Talib, peace be upon him was proceeding towards Syria when the countrymen of al-Anbar met him. Seeing him, they began to walk on foot then ran in front of him. He inquired why they were doing so. They replied that this was the way they respected their chiefs. Then he said the following: “By Allah, this does not benefit your chiefs. You are belaboring yourself in this world and earning misery for the next by it. How harmful is the labor in whose wake there is punishment, and how profitable is the case with which there is deliverance from the Fire (of Hell)!

The Imam Admonishing His Son:

38. Imam Ali ibn Aba Talib, peace be upon him said the following to his son al-Hassan (p.b.u.h.): O son! Learn four things and (a further) four things from me:
Nothing will harm you if you practice them. The richest of all riches is intelligence; the biggest destitution is foolishness; the most wild of the wild is vanity, and the best achievement is goodness of the moral character.
O my son! You should avoid making friends with a fool because if he intends to benefit you, he will harm you. You should avoid making friends with a miser because he will run away from you when you need him the most. You should avoid making friends with a sinful person because he will sell you for nought. And you should avoid making friends with a liar because he is like a mirage, making you see far things as near and near things as far.

39. Imam Ali ibn Aba Talib, peace be upon him said the following: Supererogatory worship cannot bring about nearness to Allah if it hampers what is obligatory.

40. Imam Ali ibn Aba Talib, peace be upon him said the following: The tongue of the wise man is behind his heart, while the heart of the fool is behind his tongue.

Sayyid ar-Razi says the following: “This sentence has a strange and beautiful meaning. It means that the wise man does not speak with his tongue except after consulting his mind and exercising his imagination, but the fool quickly utters whatever comes to his tongue without pondering. In this way, the tongue of the wise man follows his heart while the heart of the fool follows his tongue.”

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