Regret for wasted time should be deep, for time passes quickly and it is difficult to make up what you have missed.
Time for the worshiper is a time for worship and reciting awraad, and for the devoted Muslim it is time for turning to Allah and focusing on Him with all his heart.
Time is the dearest thing to him and he would feel very sad if time passes without him doing what he is meant to do. If he misses time, he can never make it up, because a second time has its own duties. So if he misses time, there is no way he can bring it back.
—Ibn al-Qayyim [d. 751H/1350CE]
(Madaarij al-Saalikeen 3/49)
If a dirham slips off the hand of one of them, you will find him lamenting for the whole day, ‘My dirham is gone.’ But when he wastes hours of his life he will never say, ‘O my life is gone!’ But there were people who preserved their time and used it in righteous deeds.
—Abu Bakr b. ‘Ayyash
(Read on pg 198, Salaahud-Deen ibn ‘Alee ibn ‘Abdul-Mawjood, Imam Sa’eed bin Al-Musayyab (Biography). Darussalam Publishers. Riyadh:2006.)
Earn virtues in your spare time, because,
Your death might come upon a sudden,
Many healthy people I have seen who were free of disease,
But then their soul parted upon a sudden.
—Muhammad b. Ismaa’eel al-Bukhari
(Read on pg 137-138, Salaahud-Deen ibn ‘Alee ibn ‘Abdul-Maujood, The Biography of Imam Bukhaaree. Darussalam. Riyadh: 2005.)
—Ibn al-Qayyim [d. 751H/1350CE]
[Ighaatha al-Lahfaa, vol. 1, pp.70-73. Quoted in Commentary on the Forty Hadith of al-Nawawi, vol 1, pp. 471-472]
(Read on pg 61-62. Dr. Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips, A Commentary on Ibn Taymiyyah’s Essay on the Heart. Dalwah Corner Bookstore. Kuala Lampur: 2008.)