He says in the Collection of Reflections:
And I tell of my condition,
And reading books did not satisfy me.
When I saw a book I had not seen before, it was as if I had stumbled upon a treasure.
Indeed, I examined the register of books endowed to the Nizamiyya school.
Then it contained six thousand volumes.
And in the register are the books of Abu Hanifa, the books of al-Humaydi, and the books of our sheikh Abd al-Wahhab.
and the son of Nasser, and Abu Muhammad al-Shakhab,
and they were burdens,
and other things from every book I can handle.
And if I said: 'Indeed I have perused twenty thousand volumes,' it would be more.
And I am still in the pursuit of knowledge,
So I benefited from observing the conduct of the people.
the extent of their concern, their memorization, their acts of worship, and the remarkable aspects of their sciences,
What a person who has not examined it does not know,
So I came to despise what people valued in it.
I hold the students' ambitions in contempt, and praise be to God.
Among the things he read were many sections of Ibn Aqil's Book of Arts.
It is a very large book.
It contains many noble benefits.
in preaching, exegesis, and jurisprudence,
and foundational principles, grammar, language, and poetry.
and history and stories,
And in it are his debates and his sessions that took place for him,
His reflections and the results of his thinking were recorded in it.
Thus he derived abundant benefits from it.
And perhaps he was the one who prompted him to record his thoughts.
Among them was his book, The Capture of Thought,
Overall, the Book of Arts left notable traces on the scholarship and writings of Ibn al-Jawzi,
He, may God have mercy on him, said about the Book of the Arts: This book consists of two hundred volumes.
I obtained about one hundred and fifty volumes from it.
He was extremely careful about the hours of his life,
So he did not waste his time on anything that brought no benefit.
Even the brief moments when he was compelled to receive his visitors,
He occupied it with matters that relate to his knowledge,
He says in Collected Thoughts:
Then I prepared tasks that would not prevent conversation for the times of their meeting,
So that time would not pass idly.
So I made from the preparation for meeting them readying sheets of paper, sharpening the pens, and bundling the notebooks;
So indeed these things are indispensable.
And they do not need thought, and presence of heart,
So I set it aside for the times of their visits.
So that none of my time is wasted.
Then Ibn al-Jawzi held that writing in the art of preaching complements his sermons.
Rather, it makes its benefit widespread.
So the book reaches what speech does not reach.
And it endures, while its owner lies buried beneath the earth.
And he says, may God have mercy on him:
I considered it sound judgment that the benefit of written works is greater than the benefit of oral teaching.
Because I taught it orally to a number of students during my life,
And by my written works I taught orally a multitude so vast that they cannot count what they later produced.
The proof of this is that people benefit more from the works of earlier scholars than from what they gain from their teachers.
Therefore, it is incumbent upon the scholar to devote himself to written works if he is granted success in producing a useful work.
Ibn al-Jawzi began compiling works when he was seventeen years old.
So it is no surprise that he was among the most prolific authors in Islam,
The number of his authored works exceeded four hundred books.
