Sufi Quotes

With faith one attains and realises peace and harmony. With doubt one destroys and gains freedom to move ontowards.

Fazal Inayat-Khan

Khusrau darya prem ka, ulti wa ki dhaar, Jo utra so doob gaya, jo dooba so paar. English Translation. Oh Khusrau, the river of love Runs in strange directions. One who jumps into it drowns, And one who drowns, gets across.

The feet and their tappingWrite many a lovely coupletThe body dances to your rhythm O lordAfter all, you are the master and I a puppet

Neelam Saxena Chandra

The Sufi way is through knowledge and practice, not through intellect and talk.

But one may say something and yet not be able to do it. Try, for instance, lifting yourself up by the bootstraps.

Self-mortification, far from producing liberation from material things, is far more likely to cause either an unhinged mind, delusions or a masochistic taste for more suffering, experienced, of course, as joy.

It is the message, not the man, which is important to the Sufis.

You must empty out the dirty water before you fill the pitcher with clean.

The sufis believe that they can experience something more complete.

No one is born beneath this dance. This dance gives birth to you.

Holly Lynn Payne

Greed harms you: generosity helps you. This is why is has been said: 'Greed is the mother of incapacity'.

I searched for my Beloved in the strangest of places, until the day I realized I couldn't take my eyes off Her.

Eric Micha'el Leventhal

To say "yes" to the Sufi way is to say "no" to imagined escapes.

Three things cannot be retrieved:The arrow once sped from the bowThe word spoken in hasteThe missed opportunity. Ali, the Lion of Islam.

Feeling important is a vice, not a virtue, however concealed as participation in something noble.

With enough information, it is almost impossible "not" to predict people's action.

A book, for the Sufis, is an instrument as much as it is something to give information....The key is the teacher.

That which is given free is never knowledge. It may be information....but knowledge does not come in that manner.

EPITAPH OF JALALUDIN RUMIWhen we are dead, seek not our tomb in the earth, but find it in the hearts of men.

We seek the fire of the spark that is already within us.

Careful preparation is necessary before people can perceive something which is there all the time.

The major barrier to understanding is wishful thinking and following that which pleases one.

When I run after what I think I want, my days are a furnace of stress and anxiety;if I sit in my own place of patience,what I need flows to me, and without pain. From this I understand that what I want also wants me,is looking for me and attracting me.There is a great secret here for anyone who can grasp it.

Shams-i Tabrizi

When people have a hard task to do - one which stretches them - they become less concerned with trivial matters.

The Sufi Islam practiced in northern India is quite different from the Shi'a Islam practiced in Lebannon, which in turn is different from the Sunni Islam practiced in Pakistan. Even within a single branch of Islam there are customs and practices that vary by region and across time. Thus, the Islam of seventh-century Arabia is different from the Wahhabism that exists today in Saudi Arabia.

Then Gai told me about the famous cup of the heart, which I should now begin to empty. The Sufis compare our spiritual heart, the seat of God within us, with a cup into which the love of God flows. This cup, however, needs to be emptied before it can be filled with Divine love. This emptying is a long process that requires courage, strength of character, determination, and, above all, sincerity. It is a process of reining in and eventually extinguishing the ego, of letting go of material needs, bad and unhealthy habits and emotional attachments in order to make room for God. Sufis often likened it to the process of dying and being born again. ‘Die before you die’ is a famous Sufi saying. This was the essence of every spiritual path, Gai told me.

Kristiane Backer

Saying of the ProphetMonkishnessNo monkery in Islam.

The most complete gift of God is a life based on knowledge.

Imam Ali Ibn Abu Talib

The true saint goes in and out amongst the people and eats and sleeps with them and buys and sells in the market and marries and takes part in social intercourse, and never forgets God for a single moment.

Shaikh Abu-Saeed Abil-Kheir

Materialism, attachment to things of the world, includes pride. Many religious people suffer from pride: taking pleasure or even delight in being good, or religious.

No practice exists in isolation.

Not to be greedy is, paradoxically, the highest form of looking after one's true interests.

Exercise power by means of kindness, and you may be causing more damage than you could by cruelty. Neither approach is correct.

Only the search for truth is valid, the desire for wisdom the motive. The method is assimilation, not study.

If you are 'humble', it may help you in ordinary life. If you are not, you will get nowhere in higher things.

The secret of Sufism is that it has no secret at all'.

An educated man believing in a this-that vile sky-god rewarding him-her, but punishing your enemies with hell and fire, is uneducated.

Fakeer Ishavardas

Love is an involuntary gift that manifests unplanned.

Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi

There is a Persian proverb: 'To test that which has been tested is ignorance.' To try to test something without the means of testing is even worse.

Similitude of the heart is like that of a telephone operator between man and God.

Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi

He had found riches beyond worldly imagination. He had found the never ending well of love.

Soroosh Shahrivar

116. "I have heard that on the day the world was born,the bird of love was released to fly.It searched all the three worldsbut could not find a fit resting place.So it turned and entered the inmost heart,favoured it and never flew elsewhere.The three worlds asked it then,'Why are you attached to the human heart?''Suffering," it replied, "is the only hope for humans.Where there is sorrow, there I dwell.'Where there is grief in the world, love has its dwelling.

Mir Sayyid Manjhan Shattari Rajgiri

The dance had distilled her and she had become one with the essence of all that is.

Holly Lynn Payne

When Fortune knocks, open the door,' they say. But why should one make fortune knock, by keeping the door shut?

Do we find ourself or does our self get demolished?

RemedyYour medicine is in you, and you do not observe it. Your ailment is from yourself, and you do not register it.Hazrat Ali

Sufis are those who have expunged from their minds the human tendencies of envy and enmity.

There can be no spirituality, according to the Sufi masters, without psychology, psychological insight and sociological balance.

The door of illumination is open to those for whom other doors are closed.

Virtually all organisations known to you work largely by means of your greed.

I have made You the companion of my heart.But my body is available to those who desire its company,And my body is friendly toward its guest,But the Beloved of my heart is the guest of my soul.

Rabia Al-Adawiyya

When a belief becomes more than an instrument, you are lost. You remain lost until you learn what 'belief' is really for.

The Sufis,' runs the saying, 'understand with their hearts what the most learned scholars cannot understand with their minds

Study the assumptions behind your actions. Then study the assumptions behind your assumptions.

The institution of teachership is there for this reason, that the learner must learn how to learn.

Show a man too many camels' bones,or show them to him too often,and he will not be able to recognize a camel when he comes across a live one.

It is axiomatic that the attempt to become a Sufi through a desire for personal power as normally understood will not succeed.

Learning how to learn involves examining assumptions. Mulla Nasrudin tales very often fulfil this funcition.

But what else are secrets for if not discovery? That is their nature. Only time stands between a mystery and its rightful master.

To Be One With The One Is Not For Everyone

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