"In the dead night, a Sufi began to weep. He said. "This world is like a closed coffin, in which we are shut and in which, through our ignorance, we spend our lifes in folly and desolation. When death comes to open the lid of the coffin, each one who has the wings will fly off to eternity. But those without will remain locked in the coffin. So my friends, before the lid of this coffin is taken off, do all you can to become a bird of the way to god; do all you can to develop your wings and your feathers."

(Farid ud-Din Attar, Translations by Andrew Harvey and Eryk Hanut)