“Let no servant place his hope in anyone but his Lord, and let him fear nothing but his own sins.”

‘Ali ibn Abi Talib (d. 40 AH / 661 CE) gave this as the first of five pieces of advice, telling his listeners that if they rode their camels to exhaustion in search of such words they would not find them. The rest: the ignorant should not be ashamed to ask, the scholar should not be ashamed to say “Allah knows best,” and patience is to faith what the head is to the body. Abu Nu‘aym records it in Hilyat al-Awliya’.