I remember that in my early youth I was overmuch religious and vigilant, and scrupulously pious and abstinent. One night I sat up in attendance on my father, on whom be God's mercy, never once closed my eyes during the whole night, and held the precious Qur'an open on my lap, while the company around us were fast asleep. I said to my father: "Not an individual of these will raise his head that he may perform his genuflections, or ritual of prayer; but they are all so sound asleep, that you might conclude they were dead." He replied: "O emanation of your father, you had also better have slept than that you should thus calumniate the failings of mankind.---The braggart can discern only his own precious person; he will draw the veil of conceit all around him. Were fortune to bestow upon him God's all-searching eye, he would find nobody weaker than himself." Shaykh Sa'adi in Gulistan, Chapter Two: On the Morals of Dervishes.
