Pearls of Wisdom 378

1. Friendships with the ignorant and the heedless are as fickle as the changing times and as quick
to disappear as the setting sun.

2. Consider not a man worthless until you had a chance to converse with him.

3. Health and well-being on the one hand and gluttony on the other are mutually exclusive.

4. Face off your difficulties with patience; and fence in your blessings with thankfulness.

5. A man's intellect becomes apparent from his speech; as does his character from the goodness
of his action.

6. Always consider your intellect to be lacking; otherwise too much faith in it surely leads to error.

7. Seek Allah's refuge from the heedlessness which comes from prosperity; so deep it is, that it will
take one very long to climb out of it.

8. It is not in the make-up of a noble person to delay in rewarding nor is it that of a generous one to
exact revenge.

9. Even if Allah had not decreed to abstain from the foul and impure the man of intellect would still
surely do so.

10. Do not consider admitting ignorance as a necessarily bad thing, for saying, "I do not know"
is itself half of knowledge. [Ali radi Allah anhu]