"How puny and insignificant is the evanescent drop when compared with the waves and billows of God’s limitless and everlasting Ocean ..."

"By the righteousness of My name, the All-Merciful! The Pen of the Most High trembleth with a great trembling and is sore shaken at the revelation of these words. How puny and insignificant is the evanescent drop when compared with the waves and billows of God’s limitless and everlasting Ocean, and how utterly contemptible must every contingent and perishable thing appear when brought face to face with the uncreated, the unspeakable glory of the Eternal! We implore pardon of God, the All-Powerful, for them that entertain such beliefs, and give utterance to such words. Say: O people! How can a fleeting fancy compare with the Self-Subsisting, and how can the Creator be likened unto His creatures, who are but as the script of His Pen? Nay, His script excelleth all things, and is sanctified from, and immeasurably exalted above, all creatures."

-Bahá'u'lláh, Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, XCIII, pp. 187-188




     "Fasting and obligatory prayer constitute the two pillars that sustain the revealed Law of God. Bahá’u’lláh in one of His Tablets affirms that He has revealed the laws of obligatory prayer and fasting so that through them the believers may draw nigh unto God. 
     Shoghi Effendi indicates that the fasting period, which involves complete abstention from food and drink from sunrise till sunset, is …essentially a period of meditation and prayer, of spiritual recuperation, during which the believer must strive to make the necessary readjustments in his inner life, and to refresh and reinvigorate the spiritual forces latent in his soul. Its significance and purpose are, therefore, fundamentally spiritual in character. Fasting is symbolic, and a reminder of abstinence from selfish and carnal desires. ...
     Fasting is enjoined on all the believers once they attain the age of 15 and until they reach the age of 70 years. The nineteen-day period of fasting coincides with the Bahá’í month of ‘Alá, usually 2–20 March, immediately after the termination of the Intercalary Days..., and is followed by the feast of Naw-Rúz." 
The Kitáb-i-Aqdas, pp. 176-177