one bullet leads to the annihilation of thirty million.1 Some conditions are such that a small act raises man to the highest of the high, while in others a small action relegates him to the lowest of the low.
49. One grain of truth consumes a stack of lies. One grain of reality is superior to a stack of illusions. Everything you say should be true, but it is not right to say everything true.
50. A person who sees the good in things has good thoughts. And he who has good thoughts receives pleasure from life.
51. What gives life to people is hope; what kills them is despair.
52. Since early days, this Islamic state took on itself the upholding of the Word of God, the maintenance of independence, and jihad for Islam, an obligation which if undertaken by part of the community, released the rest; it considered itself to be charged with sacrificing itself for Islam, which was united, and carrying the banner of the Caliphate. The misfortune it now suffers will therefore be made up for by the future prosperity and freedom of the Islamic World. For this calamity has speeded up in wondrous fashion the growth of Islamic brotherhood, the leaven of our lives.
53. To attribute to Christianity the virtues of civilization, which are not its property, and to show retrogression, the enemy of Islam, to be its friend, is to suggest that the firmament is revolving in the opposite direction.
54. A tarnished, matchless diamond is always superior to a piece of glistening glass.
55. Those who seek everything in materiality know only what their eyes see, and such eyes are blind in spiritual matters.
56. If metaphors fall from the hands of learning into those of ignorance, they are transformed into their literal meanings, opening the door to superstition.
57. Favour greater than divine favour is not favour. Everything has to be described as it is.
58. Fame ascribes to man what is not his.
59. Hadiths are the source of life and inspirer of reality.
60. The revival of religion is the revival of the nation. The life of religion is the light of life.
A single bullet fired by a Serbian soldier at the Austrian crown-prince set off the Great War, and was the cause of thirty million souls being lost.