Sufi Wisdom Quotes

Farsi Couplet: Agar firdaus bar roo-e zameen ast, Hameen ast-o hameen ast-o hameen ast. English Translation: If there is a paradise on earth, It is this, it is this, it is this

Farsi Couplet: Mun tu shudam tu mun shudi,mun tun shudam tu jaan shudi Taakas na guyad baad azeen, mun deegaram tu deegari English Translation: I have become you, and you me, I am the body, you soul; So that no one can say hereafter, That you are someone, and me someone else.

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.

A craftsman pulled a reed from the reedbed, cut holes in it, and called it a human being. Since then, it's been wailing a tender agony of parting, never mentioning the skill that gave it life as a flute

Sayings of the Prophet Trust: Trust in God – but tie your camel first.

Death is the protector of life and life is the process of death.

He who has no light in his heart, what will he gain from the festival of lamps.

Dance less in motion and more in spirit; awaken the dreamer within.

In reality, every reality is a veil over reality.

There is within the human heart a quality of intelligence which has been known to surpass that attributed to the human mind.

Inner Knowledge -- You want to become wise in one lesson: First become a real human being.

One day we will all wear a garment which has no pockets...

Anybody or anything may stand between you and knowledge if you are unfit for it.

They say: 'Seek wisdom while you have the strength, or you may lose the strength without gaining wisdom.

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

Do not destroy anybody’s peace. You will find peace.

When the child is ill, the mother will know how to pray.

‎"Intellect is the knowledge obtained by experience of names and forms; wisdom is the knowledge which manifests only from the inner being; to acquire intellect one must delve into studies, but to obtain wisdom, nothing but the flow of divine mercy is needed; it is as natural as the instinct of swimming to the fish, or of flying to the bird. Intellect is the sight which enables one to see through the external world, but the light of wisdom enables one to see through the external into the internal world.

The wise have inherited wisdom by means of silence and contemplation.

Music does not need language of words for it has movements of dance to do its translation.

We wish to become one thing or another, rather we wish to become everything and in this pursuit of becoming everything we only end up becoming idiots.

Wisdom is when you understand what, previously, at best you only knew.

The world is ancient, but it has not lost its newness.

Life is not only Newton, it is also Milton.

In love, there is no distinction between success and failure. If love remains then even separation is union otherwise even union is separation.

Soar like an eagle beyond skies of heavens reach; as wings of dreams dance with winds of reality.

Dance resides within us all. Some find it when joy conquers sorrow, others express it through celebration of movements; and then there are those... whose existence is dance,

One who has no beloved in the country can never love the country.

The ocean sleeps. The ocean wakes. And the waking of the ocean is the waking of the soul. At midnight wakefulness springs from within the ocean.

In a village where everyone has only one leg, the biped will hop about more lamely than anyone else, if he knows what is good for him.

My father used to tell me that stories offer the listener a chance to escape but, more importantly, he said, they provide people with a chance to maximize their minds. Suspend ordinary constraints, allow the imagination to be freed, and we are charged with the capability of heighetned thought. Learn to use your eyes as if they are your ears, he said, and you become connected with the ancient heritage of man, a dream world for the waking mind.

Prescribing hard work for the soft, or easy work for the hardy, is generally nonsense. What is always needed in any aim is right effort, right time, right people, right materials.

If you do not understand, you cannot love. You can only imagine that you love.

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.

It is not long before those who are obedient in service obtain command.

No surgeon can treat the wounds of the tongue.

When the melody plays, footsteps move, heart sings and spirit begin to dance.

Definitions from Mulla Do-Piaza A fool: A man trying to be honest with the dishonest.

People carry on whole conversations in proverbs. But they are not LIVING the proverbs.

The period before the dawn of knowledge is called the age of darkness.

Farsi Couplet: Naala-e zanjeer-e Majnun arghanoon-e aashiqanast Zauq-e aan andaza-e gosh-e ulul-albaab neest English Translation: The creaking of the chain of Majnun is the orchestra of the lovers, To appreciate its music is quite beyond the ears of the wise.

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

Remember the proverb: 'A sign is enough for the alert, but a thousand counsels are not enough for the negligent.

The stupidest man I ever met had a favourite saying. It was: 'What do you think I am, stupid, or something?

Dear Friend, Your Heart is a polished mirror. You must wipe it clean of the veil of dust which has gathered upon it, because it is destined to reflect the light of divine secrets.

SAYING OF SHEIKH ZIAUDIN: Self-justification is worse than the original offence.

The spirit is the mirror; the body is the rust. (Divan-i-Shamsi Tabriz)

among roses, be a rose, among thorns, be a thorn

This life is but a dream. A state of sleep but how unfortunate that man's eyes open only when they are about to be closed (forever).

Many things which are called 'secrets' are only things withheld from people until they can understand or effectively experience them.

Abu-Yaqub al-Susi: the Sufi is 'One who does not care when something is taken from him, but who does not cease to seek for what he has not.

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

One lie will keep out forty truths.

Show me a person who really knows what 'good' is, and I will show you that he almost never uses the word.

A Sufi is one who is not bound by anything nor does he bind anything

What is humanity? To feel pain at the sorrows of our neighbours, to feel humiliated at the humiliation of fellow-beings.

You must improve yourself on a higher level if you are to be able to help people, and not just weep over them.

In the distorting mirror of your mind, an angel can seem to have a devil's face.

If wine is the enemy of religion, I shall devour the enemy of religion.

In order to spend out our time (life) we sell some of this time. We work for someone, we labour. In freedom we do slavery.

Voice in the night A voice whispered to me last night: 'There is no such thing as a voice whispering in the night!

Do not think that your magic ring will work if you are not yourself Solomon.

In love, the Sufi meeting house And wine-shop are one place; As are all places where we find The loved one's radiant race; And what the Sufis make a show of Can be found equally Among the monks, before their cross, Within a monastery.

Nobody can stand between you and knowledge if you are fit for it.

The real generosity is when a man does something generous when nobody knows about it.

When the lion had eaten its fill, and the jackals had taken their share, the ants came along and finished up the meat from the bones of the haughty stag.

Knowledge cannot be attained except through humility.

It is not Sufism if it does not perform its function for you. A cloak is no longer a cloak if it does not keep a man warm.

A MOTTO OF THE HUMAN RACE Tell me what to do; but it must be what I want you to tell me.

Opportunity's precious, and time is a sword.

Even if false gold makes a man happy: At the mint it will be identified.

The sun teaches to all things that grow their longing for the light. But it is night that raises them to the stars.

Out of the shell of the broken heart emerges the newborn soul.

If you are penniless you will have a thousand dreams. Get even a single piece of money, however, and you will have only twenty options.

Life: sometimes the man on the saddle, sometimes the saddle on the man.

The colour of the water seems to be the colour of the glass into which it has been poured'.

Dramatic. A well developed sense of the dramatic has values beyond what people usually imagine. One of these is to realise the limitations of a sense of the dramatic.

To be fully human is to fulfill our spiritual destiny.

It is as true as anything else which can be spoken to say that all knowledge is really available everywhere.

Yuan frowns. Nothing should interrupt a Sufi Raag. His frown disappears soon after. A monk must never lose control over his emotions. Not even the deaths of thirty-seven seemingly-pet, rare animals can make him lose it.

An intelligent enemy,' he would say, stroking his beard as if it were a bristly pet, 'rather than a foolish friend.' Or, 'He learnt the language of pigeons, and forgot his own.' Or, the favourite of Jan Fishan Khan: 'Nothing is what it seems.

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

Treat this world as I do, like a wayfarer; like a horseman who stops in the shade of a tree for a time, and then moves on.

The mine is always bigger than the gem.

Better to quarrel with a friend than to support enemies.

THE HEAVENS To the mallet of the Highest Mind The heavens are the smallest possible ball. (Akhlaq-i-Mohsini)

Sufis aim to refine human consciousness. This is Sufi mysticism: not mystification or magic, but a specific Path.

Patience is bitter, but bears a sweet fruit.

A man's capacity is the same as his breadth of vision.

Haste is from the Devil.

I Exist In Your Existence

Man thinks many things. He thinks he is One. He is usually several. Until he becomes One, he cannot have a fair idea of what he is at all.

Love is the divine Mother's arms; when those arms are spread, every soul falls into them. The Sufis of all ages have been known for their beautiful personality. It does not mean that among them there have not been people with great powers, wonderful powers and wisdom. But beyond all that, what is most known of the Sufis is the human side of their nature: that tact which attuned them to wise and foolish, to poor and rich, to strong and weak -- to all. They met everyone on his own plane, they spoke to everyone in his own language. What did Jesus teach when he said to the fishermen, 'Come hither, I will make you fishers of men?' It did not mean, 'I will teach you ways by which you get the best of man.' It only meant: your tact, your sympathy will spread its arms before every soul who comes, as mother's arms are spread out for her little ones.

You can learn more in half an hour's direct contact with a source of knowledge (no matter the apparent reason for the contact or the subject of the transaction) than you can in years of formal effort.

As long as man was in the moolight he desired to reach the moon…there was bliss in the moonlight but the moon itself was distant. Moonlight was near but man longed for the moon…man reached the moon but there he was without moonlight. If one reaches the moon one does not find moonlight any longer and if one is in moonlight one does not find the moon. It is a strange fact that one is only because of the other…one is a sign of the other yet both are forever separate. If the Beloved is the Moon, moonlight is His remembrance. When the Beloved is present His remembrance is not and when His remembrance is present the Beloved is not. Proximity to one is distance from the other, Union with one is separation from the other. Thus union is hidden in every separation and separation in every union.

One can give or withhold in a manner far more effective, sophisticated, useful, which is quite invisible to people who think that giving or withholding is done by external assessment. If you seek some mark of favour or 'promotion', know that you are not ready for it. Progress comes through capacity to learn, and is irresistible. Nobody can stand between you and knowledge if you are fit for it.

In the modern world we are in a paradoxical situation; because although in theory man knows that he can extend his attention to something and then remove it, he very often does not do so. In many areas he does not look at something and then detach from it, and look at something else. Once he has found something to interest himself in, he cannot detach himself from it efficiently, and therefore he cannot be objective. Note that, in most if not all languages, we have words like 'objectivity' which leads people to imagine that they have it, or can easily use it. That is equivalent (in reality if not in theory) to saying 'I know the word “gold”, so I am rich.

The main problem is that most commentators are accustomed to thinking of spiritual schools as 'systems', which are more or less alike, and which depend upon dogma and ritual: and especially upon repetition and the application of continual and standardised pressures upon their followers. The Sufi way, except in degenerate forms which are not to be classified as Sufic, is entirely different from this.

Contrary to Expectation. A wise man, the wonder of his age, taught his disciples from a seemingly inexhaustible store of wisdom. He attributed all his knowledge to a thick tome which was kept in a place of honour in his room. The sage would allow nobody to open the volume. When he died, those who had surrounded him, regarding themselves as his heirs, ran to open the book, anxious to possess what it contained. They were surprised, confused and disappointed when they found that there was writing on only one page. They became even more bewildered and then annoyed when they tried to penetrate the meaning of the phrase which met their eyes. It was: 'When you realise the difference between the container and the content, you will have knowledge.

There is a Sufi story about a man who is so good that the angels ask God to give him the gift of miracles. God wisely tells them to ask him if that is what he would wish. So the angels visit this good man and offer him first the gift of healing by hands, then the gift of conversion of souls, and lastly the gift of virtue. He refuses them all. They insist that he choose a gift or they will choose one for him. "Very well," he replies. "I ask that I may do a great deal of good without ever knowing it." The story ends this way: The angels were perplexed. They took counsel and resolved upon the following plan: Every time the saint's shadow fell behind him it would have the power to cure disease, soothe pain, and comfort sorrow. As he walked, behind him the shadow made arid paths green, caused withered plants to bloom, gave clear water to dried up brooks, fresh color to pale children, and joy to unhappy men and women. The saint simply went about his daily life diffusing virtue as the stars diffuse light and the flowers scent, without ever being aware of it. The people respecting his humility followed him silently, never speaking to him about his miracles. Soon they even forgot his name and called him "the Holy Shadow.