Hamza Yusuf Quotes

Self-restraint is the very keystone of the ethics of vow-taking.

Why did she give up wine for Lent? Polly was more sensible. She had given up strawberry jam. Cecilia had never seen Polly show more than a passing interest in strawberry jam, although now, of course, she was always catching her standing at the open fridge, staring at it longingly. The power of denial.

A religion cannot be sustained by the number of its lip-followers denying in their lives its tenets.

If men live decently it is because discipline saves their very lives for them.

I feel like I have always played within the rules. I would never break the rules.

Civilization is that mode of conduct which points out to man the path of duty. Performance of duty and observance of morality are convertible terms. To observe morality is to attain mastery over our mind and our passions. So doing, we know ourselves.

Went to church and fasted all day.

Abstinence is many times very helpful to the end of religion.

Piety and morality are but the same spirit differently manifested. Piety is religion with its face toward God; morality is religion with its face toward the world.

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites.

Self-suppression is often necessary in the interest of truth and nonviolence.

Christian practice is that evidence which confirms every other indication of true godliness.

Fasting is futile unless it is accompanied by an incessant longing for self-restraint.

To withhold our bodies from religion is to exclude religion from our lives.

Let us ask what is best - not what is customary. Let us love temperance - let us be just - let us refrain from bloodshed.

Playing around is one thing; following an established regimen is quite another. It's true with exercise equipment and it is true with prayer.

Disciplined people can do the right thing at the right time in the right way for the right reason.

If you are not willing to take pain to live by your principles, there is no point in having principles.

Let sleep itself be an exercise in piety, for such as our life and conduct have been, so also of necessity will be our dreams.

Love increases through righteous restraint and decreases through impulsive indulgence.

I'm a person who's trying to live within divine law, to the best and it's very hard because it's self-discipline, because the more you realise, the more you've got to get yourself straight, so it's hard, you know. I'm trying and there are a lot of people who are trying, even people who are not conscious that they are doing it, but they are really doing things for the good, or just to be happy or whatever.

We must understand that the highest form of freedom carries with it the greatest measure of discipline.

The streams of religion run deep or shallow, according as the banks of the Sabbath are kept up or neglected.

It is as easy for most of us to keep from stealing our dinners as it is to digest them, and there is quite as much voluntary morality involved in one process as the other.

Would you live with ease, Do what you ought, and not what you please.