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Al-Ma'arri Quotes

973–1057 Syria

Abu al-'Ala Al-Ma'arri (26 December 973 – 9 May 1057) was an Arab philosopher, poet, and writer from Ma'arrat al-Numan (then part of the Abbasid Caliphate, today part of Syria).

Syria
Philosophers

Also known as: Abu 'alaa' al-Ma'arri, Abu 'alaa' al-Tanookhy al-Ma'arri, Abu 'l-'Ala al-Ma'arri, Abu al Ala al-Maarri, Abu al-Ala al-Maari, Abu al-Ala al-Maarri

Random Al-Ma'arri quote

22 quotes

The world holds two classes of men; intelligent men without religion, and religious men without intelligence.

To beget is to increase the sum of evil.

The lizard's ancestors are the cause of its being hunted.

The inhabitants of the earth are of two sorts:
Those with brains, but no religion,
And those with religion, but no brains.

This world is such an abode that if those present here
Have their wits entire, they will never weep for the absent ones.

Some worse people than I have entered Paradise! But it is not everybody’s fortune to be granted forgiveness, it is like wealth in the Fleeting World.

Isn’t it the path to glory: what I have done,
My virtue, courage, resolution and generosity?

And I, albeit I come in Time's late hour,
Achieve what lay not in the ancients' power.

If ye unto your sons would prove,
By act how dearly them ye love,
Then every voice of wisdom joins,
To bid you leave them in your loins.

We laugh, but inept is our laughter;
We should weep and weep sore,
Who are shattered like glass, and thereafter
Re-moulded no more!

They know me well.
How could they conceal a resplendent sun?

My father has perpetrated this crime against me; I am guilty of none.

Men of acute mind call me an ascetic, but they are wrong in their diagnosis. Although I disciplined my desires, I only abandoned worldly pleasures because the best of these withdrew themselves from me.

Studies in Islamic Poetry (1921)

The holy fights by Moslem heroes fought,
The saintly works by Christian hermits wrought
And those of Jewry or of Sabian creed—
Their valour reaches not the Indian's deed
Whom zeal and awe religiously inspire
To cast his body on the flaming pyre.

Methink I am thrice-imprisoned—ask not me
Of news that need no telling—
By loss of sight, confinement in my house,
And this vile body for my spirit’s dwelling.

How sad that I returned, how sad,
Instead of dying at Baghdad!
I say, whene'er things fall amiss,
"My coming home hath brought me this."

Better for Adam and all who issued forth from his loins
That he and they, yet unborn, created never had been!
For whilst his body was dust and rotten bones in the earth,
Ah, did he feel what his children saw and suffered of woe?

Fear of death pushed Seven Sleepers into a cave,
Made Noah and his son build a ship;
Nor did Moses and Adam think it pleasant to die
Though they were promised paradise.

They recite their sacred books, although the fact informs me that these are a fiction from first to last. O Reason, thou (alone) speakest the truth. Then perish the fools who forged the (religious) traditions or interpreted them!

To let go from my hand a flea that I have caught is a kinder act than to bestow a dirhem on a man in need. There is no difference between the black earless creature which I release and the Black Prince of Kinda who bound the tiara (on his head). Both of them take precaution (against death); and life is dear to it (the flea), and it passionately desires the means of living.

Studies in Islamic Poetry (1921)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Al-Ma'arri (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.