Ibn Taymiyya Quotes

The one who is [truly] imprisoned is the one whose heart is imprisoned from Allah and the captivated one is the one whose desires have enslaved him.

The prison of lust is just that very one of which the soul shuts the doors upon herself; for each act of indulgence is the shooting of a fresh bolt.

Freedom in Christ allows you to control the desires that once controlled you.

There are those who say that temptation can be barricaded beyond the door. The ones who think that stray desires can be driven out of the heart like the moneychangers from the temple. Maybe they can, if you patrol your weak points day and night, don't look, don't smell, don't dream.

Ye whose clay-cold heads and luke-warm hearts can argue down or mask your passions--tell me, what trespass is it that man should have them?... If nature has so wove her web of kindness, that some threads of love and desire are entangled with the piece--must the whole web be rent in drawing them out?

In all the areas of life where people have sought and found consolation through forbidding their desires-sex in particular, and taste in general-the habit of judgment is now to be stamped out.

I will have a care of being a slave to myself, for it is a perpetual, a shameful, and the heaviest of all servitudes; and this may be done by moderate desires.

The avarice person is ever in want; let your desired aim have a fixed limit.

Your master is he who controls that on which you have set your heart or wish to avoid.

Freedom is secured not by the fulfillment of one's desires, but by the removal of desire.

Then we have the silence of the eyes which will always help us to see God. Our eyes are like two windows through which Christ or the world comes to our hearts. Often we need great courage to keep them closed. How often we say, I wish I had not seen this thing, and yet we take so little trouble to overcome the desire to see everything.

I succeeded in using my charms like a weapon; I learned to play with other's hearts and to master my own desires.

Her grey, sun-strained eyes stared straight ahead, but she had deliberately shifted our relations, and for a moment I thought I loved her. But I am slow-thinking and full of interior rules that act as brakes on my desires, and I knew that first I had to get myself definitely out of that tangle back home.

We are dominated by everything with which our self is identified. We can dominate and control everything from which we disidentify ourselves. The normal mistake we all make is to identify ourselves with some content of consciousness rather than with consciousness itself. Some people get their identity from their feelings, others from their thoughts, others from their social roles. But this identification with a part of the personality destroys the freedom which comes from the experience of the pure “I”.

That moderation which nature prescribes, which limits our desires by resources restricted to our needs, has abandoned the field; it has now come to this -- that to want only what is enough is a sign both of boorishness and of utter destitution.

Shackled heart, free spirit.--Whoever binds his heart tightly and imprisons it may indulge his spirit in many liberties: I have already said that once. But no one believes me unless he already knows.

Do you desire not to be angry? Be not inquisitive. He who inquires what is said of him only works out his own misery.

Roza, my self-control is ten times stronger than yours." I opened my eyes, shifting to look into his. I brushed his hair back and smiled, certain my heart would expand and expand until there was nothing left of me. "Oh yeah? That's not the impression I just got." "Wait until next time," he warned. "I'll do things that'll make you lose control within seconds.

You should learn to say nothing that will cause you regret. You should not say what is not in your heart - or what is only in your heart for a moment. But you know this - silence is better.

The deepest desire of our hearts is for union for God. God created us for union with himself. This is the original purpose of our lives.

To be enslaved to oneself is the heaviest of all servitudes.-

You find freedom inside - nowhere else. In the heart of every being is that one space which is free, which is filled with Peace, and which is full of Love.

I have made a pact with my tongue, not to speak when my heart is disturbed.

Everything starts with prayer. Love to pray-feel the need to pray often during the day and take the trouble to pray. If you want to pray better, you must pray more. The more you pray, the easier it becomes. Perfect prayer does not consist of many words but in the fervor of the desire which raises the heart to Jesus.

Can we ever break free of the devices and desires of our own hearts? Might not our conscience be telling us what we most want to hear?