Talk:Aga Khan III

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 * Never, in my life - I may say with complete honesty - have I for an instant been bored. Every day has been so short, every hour so fleeting, every minute so filled with the life I love that time for me has fled on far too swift a wing. A mind that is occupied, in health or in sickness, with things outside itself and its own concerns is, I believe, a perpetual source of true happiness.


 * It was silly of the poet Omar to write: "Ah love, could you and I with Him conspire, to grasp this sorry scheme of things entire. Would we not shatter it to bits, and then remold it nearer to the heart's desire?" That way lies unhappiness, destruction. It is not a sorry scheme of things, and the business, the duty of man, is to get himself into harmony with it. I would counsel my heirs to seek satisfaction, not in the flux of circumstances, but within themselves... I say you should endeavor to suit your desire to the event and not the event to your desire.


 * Seek communion with that Eternal Reality which I call Allah and you call God! For that is the twin problem of existence – to be at once entirely yourself and altogether at one with the Eternal.


 * Never forget this: The society in which we live cannot give a man happiness... Society can give a man space to breathe and freedom to move in it; it can afford him the means of keeping himself healthy and making himself strong. But happiness never depends on one's surroundings; it depends altogether and exclusively on oneself.


 * I should have a word to say to those who deem themselves unfortunate from a worldly point of view. I should say to them, do not look up and lament that you are not as well off as those above you, look down and congratulate yourself that you are better off than those below you. To a man who looks with such eyes upon the world it is not a prison but a garden. A marvelous garden – the garden of the Lord.


 * There is a right and legitimate Pan-Islamism to which every sincere and behaving Muslim belongs - that is, the theory of the spiritual brotherhood and unity of the children of the Prophet. It is a deep, perennial element in that Perso-Arabian culture, that great family of civilisation to which we gave the name Islam. Islam connotes charity and goodwill towards fellow-believers everywhere...It means an abiding interest in the literature of Islam, in her beautiful arts, in her lovely architecture, in her entrancing poetry. It also means true reformation, a return to the early and pure simplicity of the faith, to its preaching by persuasion and argument, to the manifestation of a spiritual power in individual lives, to beneficent activity for mankind. A famine or a desolating fire in the Moslem quarters of Kashgar or Sarajevo would immediately draw the sympathy and material assistance of the Muslims of Karachi or Cairo. The real spiritual and cultural unity of Islam must ever grow, for to the follower of the Prophet it is the foundation of the life of the soul.