Beautiful leaving (hajr), is to leave without harming, beautiful pardoning is to pardon without rebuking, and beautiful patience is to be patient without complaining.

Mistakes are at the very base of human thought, embedded there, feeding the structure like root nodules. If we were not provided with the knack for being wrong, we could never get anything useful done. We think our way along by choosing between right and wrong alternatives, and the wrong choices have to be made as often as the right ones. We get along in life this way.

You'd think someone who'd been to medical school would be able to hear through a stethoscope that somebody was empty inside.

You must not talk about 'ain't and can't' when you speak of this great wonderful world round you, of which the wisest man knows only the very smallest corner, and is, as the great Sir Isaac Newton said, only a child picking up pebbles on the shore of a boundless ocean.

Knowing what to say, in the right way - at the perfect moment - can mean the difference between a world-class life and an average one.

Oh, how I like those little mortifications that are seen by nobody, such as rising a quarter of an hour sooner, rising for a little while in the night to pray!