Freedom is a fire, but one that brings to life the phoenix of the spirit.
According to the moth’s law, a flame is freedom. Flame is the proper heading for freedom in the law of people distinguished by their longing.
Is beauty freedom or freedom beauty?
Man deems woman’s body fair game. Woman deems man’s spirit fair game.
We should not trust a person who is ashamed for people to see him weep.
We are fascinated by what we love and destroyed by what we believe.
The mission of each life is happiness. The life of each mission requires the sacrifice of happiness.
Wisdom is the poetry of the wise, and poetry is the wisdom of the poets.
The spirit is trusted, even when the intellect disputes its veracity. Emotion is mistrusted even when the intellect lends it credence.
A slave who yearns for freedom is nobler than a freeman who consents to bondage.
Legal systems are traps that rigidify justice prematurely and snares to assault justice in full measure.
Like the antidote theriaca, legal systems are useful only on rare occasions, whereas they have the potential to cause a lot of harm.
The body is our exterior, which we ought to conceal. The spirit is our interior, which we ought to display.
The world is a body and the desert its spirit.
The tree is a hero that only falls once.
Freedom is the creature’s argument for the Creator’s existence.
The worst form of enmity between two men is that occasioned by a woman, for it endures until the cause is eliminated.
Woman and man are opposites in spirit and body. They cleave together to generate a third, incompatible creature, for the child establishes their unity while banishing them both.
Woman gives herself to a beggar who has given his self to her, but refuses herself to a sultan who has given her a kingdom while denying his self to her.
The poet’s mission is to conceal, the philosopher’s mission to reveal.
For woman, damage to her body is a defect, but a man’s defect is damage to his mind.
Homelands are like fathers whose love for their children is many times greater than that of children for their fathers.
When woman becomes our paradise, we lose the paradise of the spirit.
A son who has never left home cannot be relied on, whether this refers to his country or his family.
Emigrants are not the only ones who weep for separation from a homeland. Countries also weep for sons who have left home.
Woman discerns the pulsing love in the heart of the man who loves her. She also discerns the pulse of love in the heart of a man who loves another woman.
Man thinks with his intellect. Woman thinks with her heart. This is the secret of woman’s superiority over man.
Exile is a homeland for a man who possesses a prophetic aphorism. For a man who has lost an aphorism, a homeland is exile.
If people approach you wishing to serve you, know that you must possess wealth, power, or a secret.
Woman surrenders herself to a man who says he loves her, even when she knows he does not. Woman rejects a man who does not say he loves her, even if she knows he does.
Woman thinks even her Creator her declared enemy if He steals her companion from her.
Water is liquid time. Time is evanescent water.
Solitude aids us against the self. Company aids the self against us.
Defeat makes us alert, and victory leaves us lethargic.
What enters the mouth may poison the body. What emerges from the mouth may poison the spirit.
Imprisonment with a clear conscience is freedom, but freedom with a guilty conscience is imprisonment.
Crime is a sin against the rights of people. Sin is a crime against the rights of the Creator.
Loss of worldly pleasure is the price for perceiving the true nature of the world.
It is woman’s destiny to give her heart to men whose spiritual depth she appreciates, but she does not object to giving her body to utter fools, provided they amuse her.
The fatherland is like a father who treats most roughly the child he loves.
Woman has no choice but to strip bare her body, since her spirit is a lost goal.
A wanton woman bares her body. A wanton man bares his spirit.
Man’s spirit sheathes his body. Woman’s body sheathes her spirit.
Sweat is the body’s blood. Blood is the spirit’s sweat.
The desert is not a land wasted by deprivation. The desert is a land that use has destroyed.
No nation’s offspring are superior to those of another, since each person who thirsts for his truth is a hero and each who betrays his mission a knave.
There are two forms of insanity: that of a deranged person who is so overwhelmed by the world that he denies the spirit and that of a deranged person who is so overwhelmed by the spirit that he denies the world.
We need to renounce the world until we retain only the spirit’s contemplation and the body’s respiration.
When a man is inspired to feel contempt for his life by another person, that is abasement, but when he is inspired by an ideal it is heroism. Slaughtering our selves in the world is suicide. Slaughtering the world in our selves is sacrifice.
When a woman loves a man of property, she avenges herself on the property out of jealousy for its sway over its master. When a woman hates a man of property she avenges herself on his property out of hatred for its owner.
A wealthy person considers his wealth a lord. Whoever possesses a woman sees this woman as a lord. Anyone possessing a child considers the child a lord. Anyone possessing no wealth, no woman, and no child, sees the lord of lords as a lord.
The man who loses his battle with solitude finds no refuge save in a woman’s embrace.
The ascetic is dead in life and alive in death.
Most living people are actually dead of worldliness. A minority of the deceased live on.
When wealthy, we are enslaved by women. When impoverished, we are enslaved by men.
Our existence in the desert is delimited. The existence of the desert in us is limitless.
The proof for death is life. The proof for life is death.
The desert, like deliverance, is an unknown beyond our powers of discovery.
The desert is divinity made manifest. Divinity is a hidden desert.
The desert is prophecy expressed physically. Prophecy is a desert camouflaged.
We lose the sons we marry to the daughters of strangers and gain the sons of strangers when we marry our daughters to them.
The time we kill kills us.
Time is that unknown entity that we always kill by talking but that always kills us by its deeds.
When I search for reality in the world I kill the world and my self. When I search for reality in my self, I bring to life the world and my self.
In the world, we are felons. In eternity, we are judges.
The desert is a homeland that has migrated.
Time is a vessel with life on its outside and annihilation inside.
If reality is a substance, then freedom is its essence. If reality is an essence, then freedom is its substance.
Beauty is the nobility of the body. Nobility is the beauty of the spirit.
Poverty that reforms us is nobler than riches that corrupt us.
Poverty that reforms us enriches us. Wealth that corrupts us impoverishes us.
The god we love we do not fear. The god we fear we do not love.
Freedom is the desert’s water, and water is the body’s freedom.
Language use exhausts the spirit just as the appetites exhaust the body.
If we cannot discover something to do with our time, time discovers something to do with us.
Man does not find time to spend money, since he is so preoccupied with making it. Woman does not find time to make money, since she is so preoccupied with spending it.
A tomb in the desert is everlasting sleep in a paradise of nonexistence.