Imam Ghazali, born in 1058 CE in Tus, Iran, was a towering figure in Islamic scholarship, philosophy, and mysticism. His extensive works spanned theology, philosophy, jurisprudence, and mysticism, defending Sunni creed and addressing philosophical skepticism. Despite his scholarly success, Ghazali experienced a spiritual crisis, leading to his departure from academia and a quest for spiritual truth. Embracing Sufism, he found solace and embarked on a profound mystical journey. Ghazali’s magnum opus, “Ihya Ulum al-Din” (The Revival of the Religious Sciences), remains a cornerstone of Islamic literature, influencing generations of scholars and seekers. His contributions to Sufism, philosophy, and jurisprudence reshaped Islamic thought, emphasizing the importance of spiritual purification, intellectual inquiry, and devotion to God. Imam Ghazali’s enduring legacy as a scholar, mystic, and spiritual guide continues to inspire Muslims worldwide, reflecting his intellectual brilliance and profound spiritual insights.
Imam Ghazali Quotes
01. “Do not buy the enmity of one man for the love of a thousand men.”
— Imam Ghazali
02. “Omar asked the Prophet what things were especially to be sought in the world. The Prophet answered – a tongue occupied in the remembrance of God, a grateful heart, and a believing wife.”
— Imam Ghazali
03. “Dear friend! Your heart is a polished mirror. You must wipe it clean of the veil of dust that has gathered upon it because it is destined to reflect the light of divine secrets.”
— Imam Ghazali
04. “No one who possesses snow would find any hardship in exchanging it for jewels and pearls. This world is like snow exposed to the sun, which continues to melt until it disappears altogether, while the next life is like a precious stone that never passes away.”
— Imam Ghazali
05. “Let your heart be in such a state that the existence or nonexistence of anything is the same. Then sit alone in a quiet place, free of any preoccupation, even the reciting of the Quran or thinking about its meaning. Let nothing besides God enter you. Once you are seated in this manner, say – ‘Allah, Allah,’ keeping thought on these words.”
— Imam Ghazali
06. “Does money upset the hearts of learned men? He answered – men whose hearts are changed by money are not learned.”
— Imam Ghazali
07. “To completely trust in God is to be like a child who knows deeply that even if he does not call for the mother, the mother is totally aware of his condition and is looking after him.”
— Imam Ghazali
08. “Ibrahim Adham said – faith in God will be firmly established if three veils are cast aside: 1. feeling pleasure in possessing anything. 2. lamenting over the loss of anything. 3. enjoying self-praise.”
— Imam Ghazali
09. “No one who possesses snow would find any hardship in exchanging it for jewels and pearls. This world is like snow exposed to the sun, which continues to melt until it disappears altogether, while the next life is like a precious stone that never passes away.”
— Imam Ghazali
10. “People count with self-satisfaction the number of times they have recited the name of God on their prayer beads, but they keep no beads for reckoning the number of idle words they speak. Caliph Omar said – weigh well your words and deeds before they are weighed at the last judgment.”
— Imam Ghazali
11. “The soul should take care of the body, just as the pilgrim on his way to Mecca takes care of his camel; but if the pilgrim spends his whole time feeding and adorning the camel, the caravan will leave him behind, and he will perish in the desert.”
— Imam Ghazali
12. “Prayers for the dead are on the same footing as gifts for the living. The angel goes in to the dead with a tray of light, bearing a cloth of light, and says – ‘This is a gift for you from your brother so and so, from your relative so and so.’ And he delights in it just as a living person rejoices in the gift.”
— Imam Ghazali
13. “All my brothers are better than I. How is that? Every one of them considers me more worthy than himself. And whoever rates me higher than himself is in fact better than I.”
— Imam Ghazali
14. “One day the Prophet Abraham invited a person to dinner, but when he learned that he was an infidel, he canceled the invitation and turned him out. Immediately the divine voice reprimanded him saying – ‘You didn’t give him food for a day even because he belonged to a different religion, yet for the last seventy years I am feeding him in spite of his heresy. Had you fed him for one night, you would not have become poor on that account.'”
— Imam Ghazali
15. “I once had a brother in Iraq. I would go to him when times were bad and say – ‘Give me some of your money.’ He would throw me his purse for me to take what I wanted. Then one day I came to him and said – ‘I need something.’ He asked – ‘How much do you want?’ And so the sweetness of brotherhood left my heart.”
— Imam Ghazali
16. “Man loves God because of the affinity between the human soul and its Source, for it shares in the Divine nature and attributes, because through knowledge and love it can attain to eternal life and itself become Godlike.”
— Imam Ghazali
17. “Each faculty of ours delights in that for which it was created; lust delights in accomplishing desire, anger in taking vengeance, the eye in seeing beautiful objects, and the ear in hearing harmonious sounds. The highest function of the soul is the perception of truth.”
— Imam Ghazali
18. “Abu Sulayman al-Darani used to say – ‘If I owned the whole world to put in the mouth of a brother of mine, I would still deem it too little for him.’ He also said – ‘I feed a morsel to a brother of mine and find the taste of it in my own throat.'”
— Imam Ghazali
19. “To earn lawful livelihood for the household is the task of abdal. To bring them up teaching good manners and the best of conduct is the greater holy war.”
— Imam Ghazali
20. “Arrogance and conceit in a person may be recognized by three signs: 1. When alone, does he feel gloomy, and in company feel happy? 2. When people praise him, does he perform more worship? 3. When they speak badly of him, does he perform very little worship?”
— Imam Ghazali
21. “The following prayer was taught by the Prophet to his companions – ‘O God, grant me love of You, and to love those who love You, and to love whatever brings me nearer to You. O God, make Your love more precious to me than cool water to the thirsty.'”
— Imam Ghazali
22. “When the Angel of Death came to take Abraham’s soul, Abraham said – ‘Have you ever seen a friend take his friend’s life?’ God answered him – ‘Have you ever seen a friend unwilling to meet or go with a friend?'”
— Imam Ghazali
23. “The highest faculty in man is reason, which fits him for the contemplation of God. If passion and resentment and doubt master reason, the ruin of the soul follows.”
— Imam Ghazali
24. “The rule of the Sufi is that poverty (Faqr) should be his adornment and patience his ornament and satisfaction (Rida) his steed and Trust his dignity.”
— Imam Ghazali
25. “The real light is He in whose hand lies creation and its destinies. Thus, the whole world is filled with the external lights of perception and the internal light of intelligence.”
— Imam Ghazali
26. “All that we behold and perceive by our senses bear undeniable witness to the existence of God and His power and His knowledge, the rest of His attributes, whether those things be manifested or hidden.”
— Imam Ghazali
27. “What is most peculiar to Sufis cannot be learned but can only be reached by immediate experience, ecstasy, and inward transformation.”
— Imam Ghazali
28. “God is to be loved for His own sake because ‘green things and running water are loved for themselves, not for the sake of drinking the water or eating the green thing.'”
— Imam Ghazali
29.”It is better to disclose good deeds of others and connive their evil acts.”
— Imam Ghazali
30. “Never accept the invitation of the innovator, oppressor, sinful, and conceited.”
— Imam Ghazali
31. “To be a Sufi means to abide continuously in God and to live at peace with men. The right attitude toward fellow-men is that you should not lay burdens upon them but rather burden yourself according to their desires himself.”
— Imam Ghazali
32. “Be moderate in our worship of Him. Shun heaviness but be consistent.”
— Imam Ghazali
33. “Attain knowledge – that knowledge which creates awareness of your inmost being.”
— Imam Ghazali
34. “By contemplative knowledge, we mean that the veil is raised, that the Divine Glory is revealed so clearly that it cannot be doubted and this would be possible to man if the mirror were not dimmed by rust and impurities due to the defilement of this world.”
— Imam Ghazali
35. “It is incumbent on a man to dive deep into the sea of love; if the wave of love lands him on the shore of favor, he had attained the highest achievement.”
— Imam Ghazali
36. “Eternal Truth can be realized at a stage when the seeker abandons the sensual world which is unreal.”
— Imam Ghazali
37. “The best device to get vigilant awareness in prayer is to keep in view the meanings of what you recite.”
— Imam Ghazali
38. “God is self-existing, being neither substance nor body nor accident. That the whole world is made of substance, accidents, and bodies and consequently He resembles nothing and nothing resembles Him.”
— Imam Ghazali
39. “How great is the difference between knowing the definition, causes, and conditions of drunkenness and actually being drunk. The drunken man knows nothing about the definition and theory of drunkenness, but he is drunk; while the sober man, knowing the definition and the principles of drunkenness, is not drunk at all.”
— Imam Ghazali
40. “When you get up in the morning, start your day with the glorification of the Most Glorious.”
— Imam Ghazali
41. “To feed an ascetic is worship and to feed an evil-doer is to help sinfulness.”
— Imam Ghazali
42. “Scientific knowledge is above Faith and Mystic experience is above knowledge.”
— Imam Ghazali
43. “Tongue engaged in Zikr, heart immersed in thankfulness, and a loyal wife are great boons.”
— Imam Ghazali
44. “Human nature, in fact, testifies that it is subject to the Will of God and governed in accordance with His laws.”
— Imam Ghazali
45. “It is difficult to save from wickedness unless the lustful glance is protected.”
— Imam Ghazali
46. “That feast is worst in which rich people are invited and the poor ignored.”
— Imam Ghazali
47. “Love for God means the soul’s contemplation of Divine Attributes. God grants the vision of His Divine Qualities to His friends (Auliya) and hence His lovers love him because He wants that He should be loved.”
— Imam Ghazali
48. “To overcome appetitive desire is the quality of the angels, and to be overpowered by them is the trait of animals.”
— Imam Ghazali
49. “The visible world is to the world invisible as the husk to the kernel, as the outward form and body to the spirit, as darkness to light, and as the ignoble to the sublime. Therefore, the invisible world is called the World Supernal and the Spiritual World and the world of Light. He who is in that world above is with God and has the keys of the unseen.”
— Imam Ghazali
50. “It cannot be denied that where Beauty is perceived, it is natural to love it, and if it is certain that God is Beauty, He must be loved by that one to whom His Beauty and His Majesty are revealed.”
— Imam Ghazali
51. “It is the mark of Saintship to show compassion to all God’s servants, to be pitiful towards them and to fight for them and with them against the forces of Evil.”
— Imam Ghazali
52. “Ghazali regards God as immanent in his Sufi system in spite of his faith in a Transcendent God.”
— Imam Ghazali
53. “Glory be to Him, who is concealed from sight by the brightness of His light. If He had not veiled Himself with seventy thousand veils of Light, the splendors of His Countenance would surely consume the eyes of those who contemplate the Beauty which is His.”
— Imam Ghazali
54. “Aspirant of worldly indulgence is like a person who drinks the saltish water of the sea. The more he drinks, the more his thirst increases.”
— Imam Ghazali
55. “Be moderate in our worship of Him. Shun heaviness but be consistent.”
— Imam Ghazali
56. “Attain knowledge – that knowledge which creates awareness of your inmost being.”
— Imam Ghazali
57. “By contemplative knowledge, we mean that the veil is raised, that the Divine Glory is revealed so clearly that it cannot be doubted and this would be possible to man if the mirror were not dimmed by rust and impurities due to the defilement of this world.”
— Imam Ghazali
58. “It is incumbent on a man to dive deep into the sea of love; if the wave of love lands him on the shore of favor, he had attained the highest achievement.”
— Imam Ghazali
59. “Eternal Truth can be realized at a stage when the seeker abandons the sensual world which is unreal.”
— Imam Ghazali
60. “The best device to get vigilant awareness in prayer is to keep in view the meanings of what you recite.”
— Imam Ghazali
61. “God is self-existing, being neither substance nor body nor accident. That the whole world is made of substance, accidents, and bodies and consequently He resembles nothing and nothing resembles Him.”
— Imam Ghazali
62. “How great is the difference between knowing the definition, causes, and conditions of drunkenness and actually being drunk. The drunken man knows nothing about the definition and theory of drunkenness, but he is drunk; while the sober man, knowing the definition and the principles of drunkenness, is not drunk at all.”
— Imam Ghazali
63. “When you get up in the morning, start your day with the glorification of the Most Glorious.”
— Imam Ghazali
64. “To feed an ascetic is worship and to feed an evil-doer is to help sinfulness.”
— Imam Ghazali
65. “Scientific knowledge is above Faith and Mystic experience is above knowledge.”
— Imam Ghazali
66. “Tongue engaged in Zikr, heart immersed in thankfulness, and a loyal wife are great boons.”
— Imam Ghazali
67. “Human nature, in fact, testifies that it is subject to the Will of God and governed in accordance with His laws.”
— Imam Ghazali
68. “It is difficult to save from wickedness unless the lustful glance is protected.”
— Imam Ghazali
69. “That feast is worst in which rich people are invited and the poor ignored.”
— Imam Ghazali
70. “Love for God means the soul’s contemplation of Divine Attributes. God grants the vision of His Divine Qualities to His friends (Auliya) and hence His lovers love him because He wants that He should be loved.”
— Imam Ghazali
71. “To overcome appetitive desire is the quality of the angels, and to be overpowered by them is the trait of animals.”
— Imam Ghazali
72. “The visible world is to the world invisible as the husk to the kernel, as the outward form and body to the spirit, as darkness to light, and as the ignoble to the sublime. Therefore, the invisible world is called the World Supernal and the Spiritual World and the world of Light. He who is in that world above is with God and has the keys of the unseen.”
— Imam Ghazali
73. “It cannot be denied that where Beauty is perceived, it is natural to love it, and if it is certain that God is Beauty, He must be loved by that one to whom His Beauty and His Majesty are revealed.”
— Imam Ghazali
74. “It is the mark of Saintship to show compassion to all God’s servants, to be pitiful towards them and to fight for them and with them against the forces of Evil.”
— Imam Ghazali
75. “Ghazali regards God as immanent in his Sufi system in spite of his faith in a Transcendent God.”
— Imam Ghazali
76. “Glory be to Him, who is concealed from sight by the brightness of His light. If He had not veiled Himself with seventy thousand veils of Light, the splendors of His Countenance would surely consume the eyes of those who contemplate the Beauty which is His.”
— Imam Ghazali
77. “Aspirant of worldly indulgence is like a person who drinks the saltish water of the sea. The more he drinks, the more his thirst increases.”
— Imam Ghazali
