Sufism Quotes

“The first lesson to learn is to resign oneself to the little difficulties in life, not to hit out at everything one comes up against. If one were able to manage this one would not need to cultivate great power; even one's presence would be healing.”
― Hazrat Inayat Khan

“Three Things
Three things cannot be retrieved:
The arrow once sped from the bow
The word spoken in haste
The missed opportunity.

(Ali the Lion, Caliph of Islam, son-in-law of Mohammed the Prophet),”
― Idries Shah, Caravan of Dreams

“Islam and Sufism are one. Teaching that to understand Islam one must be a lover, how can one understand Islam when the heart is empty of love.”
― Zarina Bibi

“One day we will all wear a garment which has no pockets...”
― Idries Shah, The Commanding Self

“Sufilere sohbet gerek
Ahilere ahret gerek
Mecnunlara Leyla gerek
Bana seni gerek seni”
― Yunus Emre

“A Drunkard accuses a Drunkard...

A sot became extremely drunk - his legs
And head sank listless, weighed by wine's thick dregs.
A sober neighbour put him in a sack
And took him homewards hoisted on his back.
Another drunk went stumbling by the first,
Who woke and stuck his head outside and cursed.
"Hey, you, you lousy dipsomaniac,"
He yelled as he was borne off in the sack,
"If you'd had fewer drinks, just two or three,
You would be walking now as well as me.”
― Attar

“Wisdom is when you understand what, previously, at best you only knew.”
― Idries Shah, Observations

“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.”
― Idries Shah, Knowing How to Know : A Practical Philosophy in the Sufi Tradition

“برغم أن وجود الله ليس مرتبطاً بإيماننا; لكن إدراكنا لهذا الوجود مرتبط كلياً بحجم إيماننا”
― مصطفى مستور , وجه الله

“Definitions from Mulla Do-Piaza
A fool:
A man trying to be honest with the dishonest.”
― Idries Shah, Caravan of Dreams

“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

“SAYING OF SHEIKH ZIAUDIN:
Self-justification is worse than the original offence.”
― Idries Shah, The Way of the Sufi

“Hak cihâna tolıdur kimseler Hakk’ı bilmez / Anı sen senden iste o senden ayru olmaz.”
― Yunus Emre, Poemas

“To be fully human is to fulfill our spiritual destiny.”
― Kabir Edmund Helminski, The Knowing Heart: A Sufi Path of Transformation

“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.”
― Idries Shah, Thinkers of the East

“How can we speak about sustainability without speaking about the Sustainer?”
― Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth

“The function of a nutrient is to become transmuted, not to leave unaltered traces.”
― Idries Shah, The Sufis

“Haste is from the Devil.”
― Idries Shah, Caravan of Dreams

“Fettered feet in the presence of friends is better than living in a garden with strangers.”
― Idries Shah, The Sufis

“We Are All a Part of God
"Recently I was sitting in an airport lounge full of people waiting to board a flight. For a few moments my eyes were opened, and I saw how each person was full of His presence, how there was nothing other than He, His light, His love, His beauty. And in the same few moments I also saw that these people did not know it. In this experience I realized that the real mystery is not that we are all divine, are filled with His substance, but that we do not know it. We do not know that we are a part of God. This experience filled me with wonder, the wonder that part of the mystery of creation is that we have been allowed to forget Him. It is His will that in us He forgets Himself, just as it is His will that He allows us to remember Him."
— The Circle of Love”
― Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, The Circle of Love

“In the West we are so addicted to the notion of progress that we project this idea onto our spiritual life, and can become very confused by the dawning realization that He whom we seek is always with us, that we are always close to Him but do not know it. The spiritual path is a process of revealing this nearness, the intimacy of love that is always with us.”
― Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, The Circle of Love

“In Arabic to say, for example, "Wisdom is precious," you could repeat the feminine pronoun: al-hikmah hiya thamînah, literally "Wisdom, she is precious." It is stated by some Sûfî Sheikhs (Masters) that Sûfîsm originally was named Sophia, which connects Sûfîsm with the Christian Gnostic tradition, in which Wisdom is personified as a woman, the divine Sophia. The physical mother of Jesus was an external image of manifestation of the Virgin Sophia, the word 'Sophia' stemming from Sophos (wisdom). The Gnostics, whose language was Greek, identified the Holy Spirit with Sophia, Wisdom; and Wisdom was considered female.”
― Laurence Galian, Jesus, Muhammad and the Goddess

“على عكس طريقتنا في اختبار الطبيعة، التي نتعرَّف لقوانينها بعد اختباراتٍ؛ ينبغي لمن أراد اختبار ربّه الإيمان أولًا بنواميسه ثم اختبارها بعد ذلك إن شاء. ولا أبالغ حين أُقرر أنه كلما كان إيمانك بنواميسُه أرسخ؛ ازدادت احتمالات نجاح الاختبارات. إذ على قدر إيمانك بالله يكون حضوره في وعيك. فكلما ازداد إيمانك؛ ازداد حضوره كثافة في وعيك.”
― مصطفى مستور , وجه الله

“Saying of the Prophet. The Bequest: I have nothing to leave you except my family.”
― Idries Shah, Caravan of Dreams

“Let me also again emphasize that it is only within Islam that Sufism can be practiced. The two have never been separated from each other in their reality and in fact are inwardly one, and certainly they have never been separated for me throughout my life.”
― Seyyed Hossein Nasr

“Behind all created beauty the mystic sees a witness to the source of eternal beauty – the ruby is the heart of the stone, which has been transformed into a priceless jewel through patience and shedding its blood...”
― Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam

“The ecological crisis is only an externalizationf an inner malaise and cannot be solved without a spiritual rebirth of Western man […] It is still our hope that as the crisis created by man's forgetfulness of who he really is grows and that as the idols of his own making crumble one by one before his eyes, he will begin a true reform of himself, which always means a spiritual rebirtn and throughis rebirth attain a new harmony with the world of nature around him. Otherwise, it is hopeless to expect to live in harmony with that grand theophany which is virgin nature, while remaining oblivious and indifferent to the Source of that theophany both beyond nature and at the centre of man's being. (p. 9)”
― Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis in Modern Man

“A famous aphorism tells us, „The Sufi is the child of the moment“ (as-sufi ibn al-waqt). One of its meanings is that the true Sufi lives in the constant awareness that his self is nothing but what he is at the present moment. And since each present moment is unique, each moment of the self is unique. In some Sufi texts, each moment is called a nafas, a „breath.“ The Sufis are then called „the folk of the breaths“ (ahl al-anfas), because they live in full awareness of the uniqueness of the nafs at each nafas, each breath, each instant. (p. 55-56)”
― William C. Chittick, Sufism: A Beginner's Guide

“When a person begins to see all goodness as being the goodness of God, all the beauty that surrounds him as the divine beauty, he begins by worshiping a visible God, and as his heart constantly loves and admires the divine beauty in all that he sees, he begins to see in all that is visible one single vision; all becomes for him the vision of the beauty of God. His love of beauty increases his capacity to such a degree that great virtues such as tolerance and forgiveness spring naturally from his heart. Even things that people mostly look upon with contempt, he views with tolerance. The brotherhood of humanity he does not need to learn, for he does not see humanity, he sees only God. And as this vision develops, it becomes a divine vision which occupies every moment of his life. In nature he sees God, in man he sees His image, and in art and poetry he sees the dance of God. The waves of the sea bring him the message from above, and the swaying of the branches in the breeze seems to him a prayer. For him there is a constant contact with his God. He knows neither horror nor terror, nor any fear. Birth and death to him are only insignificant changes in life. Life for him is a moving picture which he loves and admires, and yet he is free from it all. He is one among all the world. He himself is happy, and he makes others happy.”
― Hazrat Inayat Khan, The Heart of Sufism: Essential Writings of Hazrat Inayat Khan

“Try not to resist the changes that come through your way. Instead let life live through you. And do not worry that your life is turning upside down. How do you know that the side you are used to is better than the one to come?”
― Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love