Desires make slaves out of kings and patience makes kings out of slaves.
Al-GhazaliRead
The mere physical man is like the ant crawling on the paper, who observes black lettering and attributes its production to the pen and nothing more.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the limited understanding of humans, equating them to ants that see only a small part of a greater reality.
Al-Ghazali's quote suggests that humans, like ants, often miss the bigger picture of existence, focusing only on the surface manifestations of reality while ignoring the deeper truths and the intricate processes behind them. It highlights a philosophical perspective on perception and understanding, pointing out that what is seen is often just a small fragment of a larger, more complex reality.
In practice
In a philosophy class discussing the nature of reality and perception.
Desires make slaves out of kings and patience makes kings out of slaves.
The happiness of the drop is to die in the river.
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.
Do not fix hopes on your health, and do not laugh away life. Remember how they walked and now all their joints lie separately, and the tongue with which they talked lightly is eaten away by the worms
A man of bad character punishes his own soul.
Do not allow your heart to take pleasure with the praises of people, nor be saddened by their condemnation.
The highest knowledge is to know that we are surrounded by mystery. Neither knowledge nor hope for the future can be the pivot of our life or determine its direction. It is intended to be solely determined by our allowing ourselves to be gripped by the ethical God, who reveals Himself in us, and by our yielding our will to His.
What could be the basis of our having more inherent value than animals? Their lack of reason, or autonomy, or intellect? Only if we are willing to make the same judgment in the case of humans who are similarly deficient.
Time spent arguing with the faithful is, oddly enough, almost never wasted.
Yet, mad am I not β and very surely do I not dream.
The more complex the network is, the more complex its pattern of interconnections, the more resilient it will be.
We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at the highest pitch of artificial tension, to strain every human desire to the limit and to create as many new desires and synthetic passions as possible, in order to cater to them with the products of our factories and printing presses and movie studios and all the rest.
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