Quotes by Authors - Page 1645

Verily, Allah enjoins justice, and the doing of good to others; and givinglike kindred; and forbids indecency, and manifest evil, and wrongfultransgression. (The Holy Quran, an-Nahl 16:91)This verse sets forth three gradations of doing good.The first is the doing of good in return for good.This is the lowest gradation and even an average personcan easily acquire this gradation that he should do goodto those who do good to him.The second gradation is a little more difficult thanthe first, and that is to take the initiative in doinggood out of pure benevolence. This is the middlegrade. Most people act benevolently towards thepoor, but there is a hidden deficiency in benevolence,that the person exercising benevolence is consciousof it and desires gratitude or prayer in return for hisbenevolence. If on any occasion the other personshould turn against him, he considers him ungrateful.On occasion he reminds him of his benevolence orputs some heavy burden upon him.The third grade of doing good is graciousness asbetween kindred. God Almighty directs that in thisgrade there should be no idea of benevolence or anydesire for gratitude, but good should be done out ofsuch eager sympathy as, for instance, a mother doesgood to her child. This is the highest grade of doinggood which cannot be exceeded. But God Almightyhas conditioned all these grades of doing good withtheir appropriate time and place. The verse citedabove clearly indicates that if these virtues are notexercised in their proper places they would becomevices.
I know I have a pretty good sense for music, but she was better than me. I used to think it was such a waste! I thought, ‘If only she had started out with a good teacher and gotten the proper training, she’d be so much further along!’ But I was wrong about that. She was not the kind of child who could stand proper training. There just happen to be people like that. They’re blessed with this marvelous talent, but they can’t make the effort to systematize it. They end up squandering it in little bits and pieces. I’ve seen my share of people like that. At first you think they’re amazing. Like, they can sight-read some terrifically difficult piece and do a damn good job playing it all the way through. You see them do it, and you’re overwhelmed. you think, ‘I could never do that in a million years.’ But that’s as far as they go. They can’t take it any further. And why not? Because they won’t put in the effort. Because they haven’t had the discipline pounded into them. They’ve been spoiled. They have just enough talent so they’ve been able to play things well without any effort and they’ve had people telling them how great they are from the time they’re little, so hard work looks stupid to them. They’ll take some piece another kid has to work on for three weeks and polish it off in half the time, so the teacher figures they’ve put enough into it and lets them go to the next thing. And they do that in half the time and go on to the next piece. They never find out what it means to be hammered by the teacher; they lose out on a certain element required or character building. It’s a tragedy.