Wonder, says Plato, is the mother of all science. Bedil (Mirza Abdul Qadir) looks at the emotion of wonder from a different standpoint. Says he: [translated from Persian] “Fragilities are contained in the glasshouse of Wonder, Blink not the eye, lest the show be over!” To Plato wonder is valuable because it leads to our questioning of nature; to Bedil it has a value of its own, irrespective of its intellectual consequences. It is impossible to express the idea more beautifully than Bedil.

“So are we drawn, as wood is shoved, By others’ sinews each way moved.” Montaigne remarks on the above lines of Horace:– “We go not, but we are carried, as things that float, now gliding gently, now hulling violently, according as the water is either stormy or calm.” While reading this passage in Montaigne I was put in mind of a verse by our late and lamented poet “Azad” who has given an expression to this idea much more beautifully than either Horace or Montaigne. Says he: [translated from Urdu] “We ride the boat of the passing age, Nay, not ride, but merely sitting on board without control.”

I would not exchange for half a dozen systems of philosophy this one verse of Naziri: [translated from Persian] “Nothing falls short in my wasteland; Every wood that could not be my pulpit, I turned it into the gallows”

The idea of Mi‘raj in Islam is to face the vision of Reality without the slightest displacement of your own ego. It is impossible to forget the words of the Muslim poet who said of the Prophet this much: “Moses fainted away by a mere surface illumination of Reality: Thou seest the very substance of Reality with a smile!”

People extol the past and deprecate the present, not understanding that the present is the whole of the past concentrated in one point.

Excuse me a bit of cruel psychology. You fail in your enterprise, and now you wish to leave your home and try your luck in other climes. It is not because your ambition has received a fresh spur from your failure; but chiefly because you wish to hide your face from those who have witnessed your failure.