Top 100 Elif Shafak Quotes
#1. What is the point of roaming the world when it's the same misery everywhere?
Elif Shafak
#2. Even a speck of love should not go unappreciated, because, as Rumi said, love is the water of life.
Elif Shafak
#3. No wonder the Prophet Muhammad said, "In this world take pity on three kinds of people. The rich man who has lost his fortune, the well-respected man who has lost his respectability, and the wise man who is surrounded by ignorants.
Elif Shafak
#4. For apprentices everywhere - no one told us that love was the hardest craft to master
Elif Shafak
#5. Real filth is the one inside. The rest simply washes off. There is only one type of dirt that cannot be cleansed with pure waters, and that is the stain of hatred and bigotry contaminating the soul. You can purify your body through abstinence and fasting, but only love will purify your heart.
Elif Shafak
#6. Male writers are thought of as "writers" first and then "men". As for female writers, they are first "feamle" and only then "writers".
Elif Shafak
#7. The past in an interpretation. The future is an illusion.
Elif Shafak
#8. I thank Him for all the things He has both given and denied me, for only He knows what is best for me.
Elif Shafak
#9. Every book is a journey, a map into the complexities of the human mind and soul.
Elif Shafak
#10. From her he had learned two fundamental things about love: first, that unlike what the romantics so pompously argued, love was more a gradual course than a sudden blossoming at first sight, and second, that he was capable of loving.
Elif Shafak
#11. I hunt everywhere for a life worth living and a knowledge worth knowing. Having roots nowhere, I have everywhere to go.
Elif Shafak
#12. Love cannot be explained, yet it explains all.
Elif Shafak
#13. Irrationality is part of everyday rationale
Elif Shafak
#14. The sharia is like a candle," said Shams of Tabriz. "It provides us with much valuable light. But let us not forget that a candle helps us to go from one place to another in the dark. If we forget where we are headed and instead concentrate on the candle, what good is it?
Elif Shafak
#15. Resentment is a cage, talent is a captured bird.
Elif Shafak
#17. It is not up to us to judge and measure each other's devoutness.
Elif Shafak
#18. Whenever you got angry with someone, you should replace the face of that person in your mind with the face of someone you love ... perhaps you could find something to like in him.
Elif Shafak
#19. Cities are erected on spiritual columns. Like giant mirrors, they reflect the hearts of their residents. If those hearts darken and lose faith, cities will lose their glamour.
Elif Shafak
#20. ... do not ask yourself which kind of love you should seek, spiritual or material, divine or mundane, Eastern or Western..Divisions only lead to more divisions. Love has no labels, definitions'.
Elif Shafak
#21. By and large over time, pain turns into grief, grief turns into silence, and silence turns into lonesomeness, as vast and bottomless as the dark oceans
Elif Shafak
#22. Invisible strands of solidarity threaded among strangers who, upon finding out they shared the same religion or nationality, developed an instant affinity.
Elif Shafak
#23. Moments are born and moments die. For new experiences to come to life, old ones need to wither away.
Elif Shafak
#24. How we see God is a direct reflection of how we see ourselves. If God brings to mind mostly fear and blame, it means there is too much fear and blame welled inside us. If we see God as full of love and compassion, so are we.
Elif Shafak
#25. Perhaps this is why lunatics have a harder time dating, not because they are off the wall but because it is hard to find soemone who is willing to date so many people in one person.
Elif Shafak
#26. Religions are like rivers: they all flow to the same sea.
Elif Shafak
#27. No eye sees so clear and sharp as the eye of love.
Elif Shafak
#28. An aura surrounds every living thing, an aura in a different colour each time. Do you know what colour is yours?
Elif Shafak
#29. It had just hit her why and how people could fall in love with Istanbul, in spite of all the sorrow it might cause them. It would not be easy to fall out of love with a city this heartbreakingly beautiful. With
Elif Shafak
#30. Loneliness was an inseparable part of being human.
Elif Shafak
#31. The water that scares you rejuvenates me. For me I can swim, and swim I shall.
Elif Shafak
#32. But the story didn't end there. Almost 800 years later, the spirits of Shams & Rumi are still alive today,whirling amid us somewhere ...
Elif Shafak
#33. Choose Love, Love! Without the sweet life of
Love, living is a burden - as you have seen.
Elif Shafak
#34. East, West, South or North makes little difference. No matter what your destination, just be sure to make every journey, a journey within. If you travel within, you'll travel the whole wide world and beyond.
Elif Shafak
#35. When I met you, Peri, I thought this girl doesn't know it but she carries the three passion of Bertrand Russel: the longing for love, the search for knowledge and unbearable compassion for the suffering of mankind.
Elif Shafak
#36. Tragedy was a commodity like any other. it was meant to be consumed- individually and collectively.
Elif Shafak
#38. Mourning is like virginity. You should give it to the one who deserves it most.
Elif Shafak
#39. Try not to resist the changes that come 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
#40. Life often felt unjust, but death was the biggest injustice.
Elif Shafak
#41. God was a maze without a map, a circle without a centre; the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that never seemed to fit together. If only she could solve this mystery, she could bring meaning to senselessness, reason to madness, order to chaos, and perhaps, too, she could learn to be happy.
Elif Shafak
#42. Once there was, once there wasn't, God's creature were as plentiful as grains and talking too much was a sin.
Elif Shafak
#43. She left her breast behind, the breast that covered her heart. And walked away.
Elif Shafak
#44. Fret not where the road will take you. Instead concentrate on the first step. That's the hardest part and that's what you are responsible for. Once you take that step let everything do what it naturally does and the rest will follow. Do not go with the flow. Be the flow.
Elif Shafak
#45. There were different ways of growing old, perhaps. Some withered first in body, others in mind, yet others in soul.
Elif Shafak
#46. Whatever you do, she would have said, don't hurt anyone and don't let anyone hurt you. Be neither a heartbreaker nor heartbroken.
Elif Shafak
#47. If only humans could live exposed to the skies, open and unafraid, watching the stars and being watched by them, with nothing to hide.
Elif Shafak
#48. When women survive an awful marriage or love affair, and all that shit, they generally avoid another relationship for quite some time. With men, however, it is just the opposite; the moment they finish a catastrophe they start looking for another one. Men are incapable of being alone.
Elif Shafak
#49. Talent is a favor of the divine. To perfect it one must work hard.
Elif Shafak
#50. Rebelliousness is not a good quality in a novice.
Elif Shafak
#51. Love exists within each of us from the moment we are born and waits to be discovered from then on.
Elif Shafak
#52. Imagination was a dangerously captivating magic for those compelled to be realistic in life, and words could be poisonous for those destined always to be silenced.
Elif Shafak
#53. She was the youngest of four girls who could not agree on anything but retained an identical conviction of always being right, and feeling each had nothing to learn from the others but lots to teach
Elif Shafak
#54. Only humans have consciousness. It's divine order. That's why Allah hold us humans responsible fir our behavior.
Elif Shafak
#55. There was so much filth to clean up; so many broken pieces to fix; so many errors to correct. Every morning she left her house she let out a quiet sigh, as if in one breath she could will away detritus of the previous day.
--Three Daughters of Eve
Elif Shafak
#56. In truth, food (within reason, don't go overboard) and beverages (non-alcoholic, we need our brains sober) are encouraged- not only because they lift the mood and help the intellect to focus, but also because it is hard to feel hostile towards someone you share bread with.
Elif Shafak
#57. God is a meticulous clockmaker. So precise is His order that everything on earth happens in its own time. Neither a minute late nor a minute early. And for everyone without exception, the clock works accurately. For each there is a time to love and a time to die.
Elif Shafak
#58. Sooner or later we were destined to meet. And when we did, I would learn why his kind hazel eyes were eternally sad and how I came to be murdered on an early-spring night.
Elif Shafak
#59. there is a thin line between losing yourself in God and losing your mind. Two
Elif Shafak
#60. No matter who we are or where we live, deep inside we all feel incomplete. It's like we have lost something and need to get it back. Just what that something is, most of us never find out. And of those who do, even fewer manage to go out and look for it.
Elif Shafak
#61. Stop running after the waves. Let the sea come to you.
Elif Shafak
#63. They say there is a thin line between losing yourself in God and losing your mind.
Elif Shafak
#64. One would expect writers and artists to understand one another better than anyone else and to be more appreciative of one another's works. That, sadly, is not always the case. Writers rarely say anything positive about each other.
Elif Shafak
#65. The past is a whirlpool. If you let it dominate your present moment, it will suck you in," said Shams as if he had read my thoughts. "Time is just an illusion. What you need is to live this very moment. That is all that matters.
Elif Shafak
#66. There is no together anymore. Once a pomegranate breaks and all its seeds scatter in differetnt directions, you cannot put it back together.
Elif Shafak
#68. Every winner is inclined to think he will be triumphant forever. Every loser tends to fear that he is going to be beaten forever. But both are wrong for the same reason: Everything changes except the face of god.
Elif Shafak
#70. In everything we do, it is our hearts that make the difference, not our outer appearances ... keep both eyes closed and instead open a third eye
the eye that sees the inner realm.
Elif Shafak
#71. You say you are ready to deliver your knowledge to another person. You want to hold the Truth in your palm as if it were a precious pearl and offer it to someone special. But opening up someone's heart to spiritual light is no small task for a human being.
Elif Shafak
#72. The words that come out of our mouths do not vanish but are perpetually stored in infinite space, and they will come back to us in due time.
Elif Shafak
#73. Deep inside, Ella blamed herself. She hadn't aged well
Elif Shafak
#74. Every true love and friendship is a story of unexpected transformation. If we are the same person before and after we loved, that means we haven't loved enough.
Elif Shafak
#75. Of three things in this life she expected no good: a man who had sold his soul to Sheitan; a woman proud of her beauty; and the news that could not wait till the morning to be delivered.
Elif Shafak
#76. What difference did it make whether they were hurt or happy, right or wrong, when the sun rose and the moon waned just the same, with or without them?
Elif Shafak
#77. Hell is in the here and now. So is heaven. Quit worrying about hell or dreaming about heaven, as they are both present inside this very moment. Every time we fall in love, we ascend to heaven. Every time we hate, envy, or fight someone, we tumble straight into the fires of hell.
Elif Shafak
#79. Isn't connecting people to distant lands and culture one of the strengths of good literature?
Elif Shafak
#80. That is why we can suicidally fall in love with others but can rarely reciprocate the love of those suicidally in love with us.
Elif Shafak
#81. There were many legends about these rocks and behind every legend a story of forbidden love.
Elif Shafak
#82. Whatever happens in your life, no matter how troubling things might seem, do not enter the neighborhood of despair. Even when all doors remain closed, God will open up a new path only for you. Be thankful!
Elif Shafak
#83. Love is the water of life. Lover is a soul of fire.
The universe turns differently when the fire loves water,
Elif Shafak
#84. Where there is love, there is bound to be heartache.
Elif Shafak
#85. Home isn't where it used to be. Home is anywhere you hang your head.
Elif Shafak
#86. If God was with you all along, why did you rummage around this whole time in search of Him? Because although it is a fact that He cannot be found by seeking, only those who seek can find Him.
Elif Shafak
#87. Let us choose one another as companions!
Let us sit at each other's feet!
Inwardly we have many harmonies - think not
That we are only what we see.
Elif Shafak
#88. If you want to experience eternal illumination, put the past and the future out of your mind and remain within the present moment.
Elif Shafak
#89. Be thankful for every thorn that others might throw at you. It is a sign that you will soon be showered in roses
Elif Shafak
#90. As well. One of them was quite pesky, insisting
Elif Shafak
#91. Zhadi. Of admirers and foes, she had plenty. They said she
Elif Shafak
#92. You dervishes are as crazy as rats in a pantry. Especially you wandering types. All day long you fast and pray and walk under the scorching sun. No wonder you start hallucinating - your brain is fried!
Elif Shafak
#93. My life is complete and fulfilled, in that I have been blessed with the three things I hold most dear: knowledge, virtue, and the capability to help others find God.
Elif Shafak
#94. How terrible it was to still be mentally and emotionally attached to someone from whom you have been physically separated.
Elif Shafak
#95. Most of the problems of the world stem from linguistic mistakes and simple misunderstandings. Don't ever take words at face value. When you step into the zone of love, language as we know it becomes obsolete. That which cannot be put into words can only be grasped through silence.
Elif Shafak
#96. When something needs to be said, I'll say it even if the whole world grabs me by the neck and tells me to keep quiet.
Elif Shafak
#97. The boy caught an almost imperceptible movement, the insatiable greed of maggots crawling inside human flesh.
Elif Shafak
#98. Because time is a drop in the ocean, and you cannot measure off one drop against another to see which one is bigger, which one is smaller.
Elif Shafak
#99. (N)ever apportion blame. How can there be opponents or rivals or even "others" when there is no "self" in the first place?
Elif Shafak
#100. If you have no reason or ability to accomplish anything, then practice the art of becoming.
If you have no reason or ability to practice the art of becoming, then just be.
If you don't have any reason or ability to just be, then endure.
Elif Shafak
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