“The approval of people is a goal that can never be reached. So hold fast to what sets you right, for there is no path to pleasing them.”

Al-Shafi‘i (150–204 AH / 767–820 CE) said this to al-Rabi‘ ibn Sulayman, the student who transmitted most of his books, and Abu Nu‘aym gives it with its chain in Hilyat al-Awliya’. In the same breath he lists what each science gives a person — the Qur’an raises you in people’s eyes, hadith strengthens your argument, grammar earns respect — and closes: “the mainstay of all of it is taqwa.”