Sati was a custom religiously followed by a few, toed halfheartedly by rather more, sidestepped by many and ignored by most

In Arabic ‘the written symbol is considered to be identical with the sound indicated by it’. Letters are not just phonetic; they are phonic, acoustic,’… script that fills the ears of him that sees it’, as poet al-Mutanabbi was to call them.

For puritans of whatever faith, God is in the detail.

In fact, meta- and particle physicists have more in common than one might suppose: both tug, if in slightly different directions, at the knots which hold the cosmos together, both look beyond the immediate world of sense perception into one where cause can only be deduced from effect - a quark is as invisible as an angel; both are confronted by Manichaean polarities - miracles and black magic, cheap energy versus total destruction.

Perfume the literature you write with only the finest inks,for literature works are luscious girls, and ink their precious perfume.—Arabic saying ~800 AD