Religious Leaders

"What shall I do unto this people? they be almost ready to stone me."

"Jehovah will rule as king forever and ever."

"O my LORD, I am not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant: but I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue."

"But for this very reason I have kept you in existence: to show you my power and to have my name declared in all the earth."

"Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?"

"Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?"

"I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt."

"And she bare him a son, and he called his name Gershom: for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land."

"No thought, no reflection, no analysis, No cultivation, no intention; Let it settle itself."

"Without mind, without meditation, without analysis, without practice, without the will, let it all be so."

"King Solomon is credited with fewer homicides than his predecessors and is remembered instead for building the Temple in Jerusalem and for writing the books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs (though with a harem of seven hundred princesses and three hundred concubines, he clearly didn’t spend all his time writing). Most of all he is remembered for his eponymous virtue, “the wisdom of Solomon.” Two prostitutes sharing a room give birth a few days apart. One of the babies dies, and each woman claims that the surviving boy is hers. The wise king adjudicates the dispute by pulling out a sword and threatening to butcher the baby and hand each woman a piece of the bloody corpse. One woman withdraws her claim, and Solomon awards the baby to her. “When all Israel heard of the verdict that the king had rendered, they stood in awe of the king, because they saw that he had divine wisdom in carrying out justice.” The distancing effect of a good story can make us forget the brutality of the world in which it was set. Just imagine a judge in family court today adjudicating a maternity dispute by pulling out a chain saw and threatening to butcher the baby before the disputants’ eyes. Solomon was confident that the more humane woman (we are never told that she was the mother) would reveal herself, and that the other woman was so spiteful that she would allow a baby to be slaughtered in front of her—and he was right! And he must have been prepared, in the event he was wrong, to carry out the butchery or else forfeit all credibility. The women, for their part, must have believed that their wise king was capable of carrying out this grisly murder."

"When King Solomon is dedicating the Temple, his prayer includes these words, addressed to the creator of the universe: “Behold, the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house which I have builded.” Nowhere does Solomon exhibit his wisdom better than here. Let us never suppose that the structures of our human minds can contain God."

"Solomon was a 'copper king', and all along that Araba, on both sides, we found many copper mines and smelting stations, all attributable to Solomon and his immediate successors."

"The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with the men of this generation, and condemn them: for she came from the utmost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here."

"That one should not be wise above what is written is well demonstrated in the life of King Solomon. The Torah says that the king whom the Israelites should set over them should not multiply horses to himself, nor wives, in order that he might not cause the people to return to Egypt, and that his heart might not turn away (Deut. 17. 16, 17). 'Then,' argued Solomon, 'since the reason for the paucity of wives and horses is given, I am sure that I can stand proof against these; I can multiply horses and wives and shall not turn away and will not cause my people to return to Egypt.' Unfortunately he was not proof against the prohibitions, as it is recorded against him (in 1 Kings 2. 1-7). And one can also see the wisdom of the Torah in withholding any reason for many commandments it enjoins."

"And also to the alien, who is not of Thy people Israel, but comes from a distant land on account of Thy fame; for hearing of Thy great name and Thy strong hand, and Thine outstretched arm, he comes to this house to pray... do Thou listen in the heavens, the place where Thou dwellest, and perform all that the alien begs of Thee, so that all the peoples of the earth may know Thy name, to fear Thee like Thine own people Israel, and to know that Thy name is proclaimed over this house that I have built."

"Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil."

"Who is like the wise man? Who knows the solution to a problem? A man’s wisdom lights up his face and softens his stern appearance. I say: “Obey the king’s orders out of regard for the oath to God. Do not rush to depart from his presence. Do not take a stand for anything bad; for he can do whatever he pleases, because the word of the king is absolute; who can say to him, ‘What are you doing?"

"I set my mind to seek and explore by wisdom concerning all that has been done under heaven. It is a grievous task which God has given to the sons of men to be afflicted with."

"In much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow."

"It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honor of kings is to search out a matter."

"But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them."

"A wise son maketh a glad father: but a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother."

"Hear counsel, and receive instruction, that thou mayest be wise in thy latter end."

"It is better to be poor and walk in integrity than to be stupid and speak lies."

"Better is the poor that walketh in his integrity, than he that is perverse in his lips, and is a fool."

"The insight of a man certainly slows down his anger, and it is beauty on his part to pass over transgression."

"The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction."

"My son, despise not the chastening of the LORD; neither be weary of his correction: For whom the LORD loveth he correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth. Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding."

"The Bible depicts a world that, seen through modern eyes, is staggering in its savagery. People enslave, rape, and murder members of their immediate families. Warlords slaughter civilians indiscriminately, including the children. Women are bought, sold, and plundered like sex toys. And Yahweh tortures and massacres people by the hundreds of thousands for trivial disobedience or for no reason at all. These atrocities are neither isolated nor obscure. They implicate all the major characters of the Old Testament, the ones that Sunday-school children draw with crayons. And they fall into a continuous plotline that stretches for millennia, from Adam and Eve through Noah, the patriarchs, Moses, Joshua, the judges, Saul, David, Solomon, and beyond. According to the biblical scholar Raymund Schwager, the Hebrew Bible “contains over six hundred passages that explicitly talk about nations, kings, or individuals attacking, destroying, and killing others. . . . Aside from the approximately one thousand verses in which Yahweh himself appears as the direct executioner of violent punishments, and the many texts in which the Lord delivers the criminal to the punisher’s sword, in over one hundred other passages Yahweh expressly gives the command to kill people.” Matthew White, a self-described atrocitologist who keeps a database with the estimated death tolls of history’s major wars, massacres, and genocides, counts about 1.2 million deaths from mass killing that are specifically enumerated in the Bible. (He excludes the half million casualties in the war between Judah and Israel described in 2 Chronicles 13 because he considers the body count historically implausible.) The victims of the Noachian flood would add another 20 million or so to the total. The good news, of course, is that most of it never happened. Not only is there no evidence that Yahweh inundated the planet and incinerated its cities, but the patriarchs, exodus, conquest, and Jewish empire are almost certainly fictions. Historians have found no mention in Egyptian writings of the departure of a million slaves (which could hardly have escaped the Egyptians’ notice); nor have archaeologists found evidence in the ruins of Jericho or neighboring cities of a sacking around 1200 BCE. And if there was a Davidic empire stretching from the Euphrates to the Red Sea around the turn of the 1st millennium BCE, no one else at the time seemed to have noticed it."

"There are three hinges out of the completion of values, of this world and the here-after:"

"Whoever has three qualities or one of them will be in the shade of the throne of Allah: He should treat people with justice. He should do nothing unless he knows whether it pleases or angers Allah. He should seek no fault in his Muslim brother until he frees himself from that fault. For when he frees himself from a fault, he finds another fault in him. It is enough for the person that his own self diverts him from the people."

"The believer does not spend an expense more lovable with Allah than saying the truth during consent and anger."

"The person who loves for the sake of God, and detests and despises for the sake of God, and gives for the sake of God, is among those whose faith has achieved completion."

"By Allah no one is our Shī‘ah except that he has piety for God and obeys him. They (the Shī‘ah) are not known and recognized except for their humility, modesty, fear of God, trustworthiness, plenty of remembrance of God, fasting, service, kindness to the parents, looking after the poor neighbours and afflicted people, mentioning them with nothing except goodness and beneficence; and they are the trustees for their tribes in all the affairs."

"I admonish you regarding five things:"

"There is no servant except that there exists a white spot upon his heart. So when he commits a sin, a black spot arises into that white spot. Then when he repents, this black spot moves away. But if he continues on committing sins, the blackness of this spot increases till such time that it overwhelms and overrides the whiteness. When the whiteness is all covered over (by the blackness), the owner of it (the heart) does never at all return towards beneficence and goodness. And This is what God means when he says: "Nay! rather, what they used to do has become like a rust upon their hearts." (Qur'an, 83:14)"

"Two kinds of my community have no share in Islam. (They are): the extremists and the fatalists."

"Indeed, faithful is the one who - when pleased and glad, his pleasure does not make him enter into sin and falsehood; and when unhappy and angry, his anger does not oust him from the world of righteousness; and when he gains power, his power does not make him commit excess, nor opression, nor make him go for a thing upon which he does not have any right."

"Indeed, when a man earns wealth from a haraam (prohibited source) - neither Hajj, nor Umra, nor strengthening of his blood kinship, is ever at all accepted or approved. By God, Almighty."

"Goodness to parents, and paying visits to ones own relatives, will ease the accounting on the Day of Judgement."

"Being religious equals being extremely loving, and being extremely loving equals being religious."

"Indeed, the most terrifically sorry of all the people on the day of resurrection, will be the servant who defines and shows the way of justice to the people, while he himself opposes it."

"Beware of sluggishness, annoyance and impatience, since they are the keys of all the evils. The person who commits sluggishness and slackness never at all discharges any rights (obligations); and the one who gets annoyed and restless, does never at all remain patient over the right (God's decree on him)."

"The scholar whose knowledge is made use of and benefited from, is worthier and more virtuous than seventy thousand worshippers and adorers."

"Fasting is a shield against (hell) fire. Charity and dole remove and finish sin, as does the remembrance of God in the midnight."

"Three things destroy a man: considering his own deeds to be really great, forgetting the sins that have been committed, considering his own opinion to be the highest."

"Whoevers tongue utters the truth, his practise becomes purified; and the one whose intention is decent and good, his sustenance increases; and whoever adopts good attitude and decent behavior with his family, his life span lengthens."

"Consider the world as an abode where in you have dropped down for an hour, then you have got to leave it and go ahead; or (suppose it is) like the wealth which you lay hands upon in a dream and become over-joyed and glad. Then you wake up to find yourself empty handed."

"The virtue of knowledge is more lovable with Allah than the virtue of worship. The best (thing) in your religion is piety."