This is the first post in a new series on the Studio Arabiya blog, in which I hope to share with you some interesting and inspiring Arabic quotes on different themes.

Reading these types of quotes, excerpts and aphorisms can help us put our Arabic studies into practice, and also appreciate how far we’ve come in our understanding of the language.  In general, I’ll try to avoid anything too linguistically complex, and also exclude excerpts from the Quran and the Prophetic traditions (Hadith) because I feel that those words are quite special and should be handled in a different way.

On Ignorance & Learning

 

إن الرجل إذا تواضع لله رفع الله حكمته

 

“If a man lowers and humbles himself for the sake of Allah, Allah elevates and increases his wisdom.”
– Umar (ra)

 

“I suffered [in ignorance], so I learned, so I changed.”

 

من لم يذق مر التعلم ساعة تجرع ذل الجهل طول حياته

 

“He who has not tasted the bitterness of learning for an hour will gulp the humiliation of ignorance for eternity.”

 

 

جسدُ الجاهل قبر يمشي على وجه الأرض

 

“An ignorant person is like a walking grave on Earth.”
— Ibn al-Qayim

 

“By knowledge, civilizations soar.”

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(PS: Please note that I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the quotes’ attributions, since they’ve been found on various websites, discussion boards or have been quoted by others, but hopefully we can benefit from the wisdom they impart! Some of these quotes were found via the arabicquotes tumblr.)