Columnist Quotes

Your life is nothing more than a love story.

Between you and God. Nothing more. Every person, every experience, every gift, every loss, every pain is sent to your path for one reason and one reason only: to bring you back to Him.

You can search the world over, but you won’t find happiness until you realize that happiness isn’t getting what you want. It’s being content with what you already have.

You cried when He took away your drop of water, not knowing He'd saved for you, the sea.

Holding on to hope when everything is dark, is the greatest test of faith

There's a special place in my heart for the ones who were with me at my lowest and still loved me when I wasn't very loveable.

When you suffer, don't speak. Look inside and listen for the duaa He inspires in you. and then ask Him. Again and again. Don't stop.

Stop hating on yourself for not being perfect.

If God wanted perfection, He would have made you an angel.

Allah manages everything in the heavens and earth—the sun, the moon, the stars—with perfection, and yet we don’t trust Him to manage our lives!

This life will never be without storms. Stop fearing the storm. Build your inner shelter.

Your heart is sacred land. Don't let just anything enter it. Guard it with your life.

When someone hurts you, your first thought may be to wish you had never met them at all. But remember that even those who've hurt you, came into your life for a reason, and left for a reason. It’s for the best and healing starts with acceptance.

Never lose hope. Stay close to Allah and when you mess up, go back to Him. Never, ever stop going back to Him. Repent often. Cry to Allah. And hold on tight-with your life-to His remembrance and to prayer. If you do this, you may get wet, but insha Allah never drown in this ocean of dunya.

Sometimes you search so hard for words.

You look for a way to interpret the language of this heart and the unspoken bond you feel. But in the end you are left with nothing but silence. And deep down you hope it’s understood.

When I need God most, He comes to me the fastest and closest.

When I need the creation most, they run from me the fastest and farthest.

Some people may complicate it for you, but the formula is simple: Love God more than anything else. More than your ego. More than your money. More than your desires...More than your sleep at dawn. Love God more than anything else, and submission comes natural. Love God more than anything else, and all goodness will follow.

Try not to confuse attachment with love.

Attachment is about fear and dependency, and has more to do with love of self than love of another. Love without attachment is the purest love because it isn't about what others can give you because your empty. It is about what you can give others because you're already full.

Don’t despair if your heart has been through a lot of trauma.

Sometimes that’s how beautiful hearts are remade: they are shattered first.

When talking about marriage, Allah says your spouses are garments for you.

A garment may or may not fit perfectly-but either way, it covers imperfections, protects, and beautifies.

There are many in this old world of ours who hold that things break about even for all of us. I have observed, for example, that we all get the same amount of ice. The rich get it in the summertime and the poor get it in the winter.

The scary thing is that in my lifetime, 95 per cent of the world's rhinos have been killed.

Raisin cookies that look like chocolate chip cookies are the main reason I have trust issues.

If baking is any labor at all, it's a labor of love.

A love that gets passed from generation to generation.

Everything you say or allow into your eyes or ears becomes data that is stored in your heart. That data is later replayed during your prayer. If you want to know what is filling your heart, look at what you think about in your prayer. If you want to guard your heart, guard your eyes, ears, and tongue.

Chili is much improved by having had a day to contemplate its fate.

Don't ever be afraid of giving. Give. Give of your time, your forgiveness, your understanding, your love. Give of your money. Give to the creation, and you'll be given by the Creator. Be generous, and the Most Generous will be generous with you.

We millennials have been advertised to our entire lives, and we can tell when somebody is just trying to sell us something. I think church is the last place I want to go to be sold another product.

Worry is a direct consequence of relying on your own efforts.

Time for solitude. God, I ask you to remake my heart. Fill it with what You love. Remove from it what You don’t. And mend what I’ve broken.

Know that you have complete control over what you put in your mouth.

No one ever ate anything by accident.

As a Muslim woman, I’ve been liberated from a silent kind of bondage.

I don’t answer to the slaves of God on earth. I answer to their King.

If you want to know what's Real, of love, of life, of loyalty, put it through the greatest test: Time.

Just as storms change the landscape of the earth, our hardships change the landscape of the heart.

When I talk to girls, they go, 'I'm not a feminist.

' And I say: 'What? You don't want to vote? Do you want to be owned by your husband? Do you want your money from your job to go into his bank account? If you were raped, do you still want that to be a crime? Congratulations : you are a feminist.'

Beware of what you let enter your heart.

There will come a day when you'd give anything to remove it.

If you want this life to stop breaking your heart, stop giving your heart to this life.

The people will come and go. Sometimes they'll be there for you. Sometimes they wont. Some will love you, some will not. This tide was never meant to be still. Step away from time to time. And know that only a heart fixed on the unmoving spot can ride the waves of this ever-changing, ever-fading life.

We must recall the most important of humanity guidelines: Be polite.

Being polite is possibly the greatest daily contribution everyone can make to life on Earth.

Beauty attracts beauty. If you want to know what you are, look at what you are drawn to.

Everyone who ever walked barefoot into his child's room late at night hates Legos.

First steps are always the hardest but until they are taken the notion of progress remains only a notion and not an achievement.

Success and failure. We think of them as opposites, but they're really not. They're companions - the hero and the sidekick.

It reminded him of his Uncle Seamus, the notorious and poetic drunk, who would sit down at the breakfast table the morning after a bender, drain a bottle of stout and say 'Ah, the chill of consciousness returns

Sometimes you have to disconnect to stay connected.

Remember the old days when you had eye contact during a conversation? When everyone wasn't looking down at a device in their hands? We've become so focused on that tiny screen that we forget the big picture, the people right in front of us.

You can usually tell that a man is good if he has a dog who loves him.

Your best shot at happiness, self-worth and personal satisfaction - the things that constitute real success - is not in earning as much as you can but in performing as well as you can something that you consider worthwhile.

Speak your heart. If they don't understand, the message was never meant for them anyway.

I love puffins. They are small, round gothic birds, and their babies are called pufflings.

I am convinced that there are times in everybody's experience when there is so much to be done, that the only way to do it is to sit down and do nothing.

There are those who argue that everything breaks even in this old dump of a world of ours. I suppose these ginks who argue that way hold that because the rich man gets ice in the summer and the poor man gets it in the winter things are breaking even for both. Maybe so, but I'll swear I can't see it that way.

No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.