The worship he could not keep up

Abdullah threw himself into worship early, fasting every single day and standing in prayer for most of the night, on top of working through the whole Qur'an at a demanding pace.

Word of it reached the Prophet ﷺ, who sent for him and asked whether it was true that he fasted every day and prayed all night.

He said it was, meaning it as devotion rather than complaint.

The Prophet ﷺ told him not to keep it up. In substance: his body had a claim on him, his eyes had a claim on him, and the people around him had a claim on him too, and a pace that could not be sustained was not the point.

He was pointed instead toward something he could actually keep doing for the rest of his life — a lighter rhythm of fasting on alternating days, in the pattern later described as the fast of Dawud, and a slower pace through the Qur'an than finishing it every night.

Abdullah pushed back a little, asking for something closer to what he had been doing, and was allowed a small amount more than the lightest option — but not what he had started with.

He is reported, later in life, once age had made even the moderate pattern hard to keep, to have said that he wished he had accepted the lighter allowance the Prophet ﷺ offered him at the start.

The account is in both Sahih collections.