“My father(Imam Al-Baqir (as)) refined my manners by three statements. He said to me 'O son! A man who befriends a vile person cannot escape blame, a man who does not restrain his words will live in regret and a man who enters suspicious places will become subject to accusations.”

“When More had said that a man who cannot restrain his passions is essentially cruel, he spoke the truth.”

“There is no man...however wise, who has not at some period in his youth said things, or lived a life, the memory of which is so unpleasant to him that he would gladly expunge it. And yet he ought not entirely to regret it, because he cannot be certain that he has indeed become a wise man...”

“It is admirable for a man to take his son fishing, but there is a special place in heaven for the father who takes his daughter shopping.”

“I saw my father as a man, and not, as a man who was my father.”

“The man who backbites an absent friend, nay, who does not stand up for him when another blames him, the man who angles for bursts of laughter and for the repute of a wit, who can invent what he never saw, who cannot keep a secret -- that man is black at heart: mark and avoid him.”