Top 100 Sufi Quotes
#1. Even the Quran, which Sufis respect as the direct speech of God, lacks the capacity to shed light upon God's essence. As one Sufi master has argued, why spend time reading a love letter (by which he means the Quran) in the presence of the Beloved who wrote it?
Reza Aslan
#2. The religion of the Sufi is the religion of the heart. The principal moral of the Sufi is to consider the heart of others, so that in the pleasure and displeasure of his fellow-man he sees the pleasure and displeasure of God.
Hazrat Inayat Khan
#3. Sufis aim to refine human consciousness. This is Sufi mysticism: not mystification or magic, but a specific Path.
Idries Shah
#4. My house was a guest house of many Jaina saints, Hindu monks, Sufi mystics, because my grandfather was interested in all of these people.
Rajneesh
#5. The selection and following of a spiritual guide is the most important duty of a Sufi.
Idries Shah
#6. It's quite common for a Sufi mystic to cry in ecstasy that he's neither a Jew, a Christian, nor a Muslim. He is at home equally in a synagogue, a mosque, a temple, or a church because when one's glimpsed the divine, one's left these man-made distinctions behind.
Karen Armstrong
#7. A fish wants to dive from dry land
into the ocean
when it hears the roaring waves.
A falcon wants to return from the forest
to the King's wrist
when it hears the drum beating "Return."
A Sufi, shimmering with light,
wants to dance like a sunbeam
when darkness surrounds him.
Rumi
#8. There can be no spirituality, according to the Sufi masters, without psychology, psychological insight and sociological balance.
Idries Shah
#9. The Sufi Muslims say, "Praise Allah, but also tie your camel to the post." In other words, it's good to take a transcendent view of the world, but don't be a chump.
Dan Harris
#10. From the Muslims I learned from the extraordinary pluralism of the Koran, the fact that the Koran endorses every single one of the major world faiths, but I was particularly enthralled by the Sufi tradition, the mystical tradition of Islam, which is so open to other religious faiths.
Karen Armstrong
#11. I thought about one of my favorite Sufi poems, which says that God long ago drew a circle in the sand exactly around the spot where you are standing right now. I was never not coming here. This was never not going to happen.
Elizabeth Gilbert
#12. A Sufi school comes into being in order to flourish and disappear, not to leave traces in mechanical ritual, or anthropologically survivals.
Idries Shah
#13. A Sufi is one who is not bound by anything nor does he bind anything
Idries Shah
#14. A Sufi manual, the Kashf-al-Mahjub, says that, towards the end of his journey, the dervish becomes the Way not the wayfarer, i.e. a place over which something is passing, not a traveller following his own free will.
Bruce Chatwin
#15. To say "yes" to the Sufi way is to say "no" to imagined escapes.
Idries Shah
#16. Sufism," according to the Sufi, "is an adventure in living, necessary adventure.
Idries Shah
#17. To be a Sufi is to detach from fixed ideas and from preconceptions; and not to try to avoid what is your lot.
Idries Shah
#18. The new Sufi tariqahs founded at this time stressed the unlimited potential of human life. Sufis could experience on the
spiritual plane what the Mongols had so nearly achieved in terrestrial politics
Karen Armstrong
#19. Sandals. The Sufi teacher Ghulam-Shah was asked what pattern he used in formulating his courses for disciples. He said: 'Barefoot until you can get sandals, sandals until you can manage boots.
Idries Shah
#20. The Sufi way is through knowledge and practice, not through intellect and talk.
Idries Shah
#21. A Sufi is alive to the value of time, and is given, every moment, to what that moment demands.
Idries Shah
#22. Sufi poetry is, in a sense, self-help poetry about how to live a decent life, how to deal with your mortality.
Mohsin Hamid
#23. The Sufi saying has it: God, to the bee, is something which has TWO stings!
Idries Shah
#24. ... the work of the (Muslim Sufi) dervish community
was to open the heart,
explore the mystery of union,
to fiercely search for and try to say the truth,
and to celebrate the glory and difficulty
in being in human incarnation.
Coleman Barks
#25. Most of the supposedly Sufi organizations, exercises and "orders" are in fact only of archaeological interest.
Idries Shah
#26. It is no accident that Sufis find that they can connect most constructively with people who are well integrated into the world, as well as having higher aims, and that those who adopt a sensible attitude towards society and life as generally known can usually absorb Sufi teachings very well indeed
Idries Shah
#27. Nothing can defile the Sufi, and he in fact purifies everything." Abu-Turab al-Nakhsabi.
Idries Shah
#28. The would-be Sufi needs guidance precisely because books, texts, while telling you what is needed, do not tell you when.
Idries Shah
#29. Delhi's most famous Sufi saint, Nizamuddin Auliya, who gave spiritual guidance to the incredible Amir Khusro - musician, scholar, poet and the father of qawwali.
Saba Naqvi
#30. A Sufi has a right to be served, but he has no right to demand. Maruf Karkhi of Khorasan
Idries Shah
#31. Irving Karchmar, a Sufi convert and friend, and the author of the novel Master of the Jinn, said it best: at some point, the devoted pass from belief into certainty.
G. Willow Wilson
#32. On the Sufi path, first you discover the art of being alone amid the crowd. Next you discover the crowd within your solitude - the voices inside you.
Elif Shafak
#34. As a Sufi I had sworn to protect life and do no harm. In this world of illusions, so many people were readt ti fight without any reason, and so many others fought for a reason. But the Sufi was the one who wouldn't fight even if he had a reason.
Elif Shafak
#35. Sufi secrets are perceived, not understood by words.
Idries Shah
#36. The Sufi saint Rabi'a Al-Adawiyya was seen carrying a firebrand and a jug of water - the firebrand to burn Paradise, the jug of water to drown Hell ...
So that both veils disappear, and God's followers worship, not out of hope for reward, nor fear of punishment, but out of love.
Craig Thompson
#37. 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.
Idries Shah
#38. There are two parts to the equation: feel good + take action. The ancient Sufi proverb says; Trust in Allah, but first tie your camel to a post.
Andrew Matthews
#39. As the political sky darkened, the court was lost in a last idyll of pleasure gardens, courtesans and mushairas, or poetic symposia, Sufi devotions and visits to pirs, as literary and religious ambition replaced the political variety.
William Dalrymple
#40. My friend, the sufi is the friend of the present moment. To say tomorrow is not our way.
Rumi
#41. I read, read enormously on all different fields of Islamic thought, from philosophy to Islamic literature, poetry, exegeses, knowledge of the Hadith, the teachings of the prophet. That's how I trained myself. And then I was appointed imam by a Sufi master from Istanbul, Turkey.
Feisal Abdul Rauf
#42. The totality of life cannot be understood, so runs Sufi teaching, if it is studied only through the methods which we use in everyday living.
Idries Shah
#43. Ibn Bassani, a Sufi mystic, all his life prayed, asking God to make his body the size of hell and send him there in the place of the world. I see my Lord Christ having done that for humanity.
Paul-Gordon Chandler
#44. None but the Creator has knowledge of the future; If anyone says he knows it, do not believe him! - Baba Musafir (d. 1714), a Naqshbandi Sufi saint, speaking about the war of succession among Aurangzeb's sons
Audrey Truschke
#45. When I was a boy in Desuq, Egypt, a city on the Rosetta branch of the Nile, about 50 miles east of Alexandria, my family lived steps away from the local landmark, a mosque named for a 13th-century Sufi sheik.
Ahmed Zewail
#46. But the world itself, as well as special attitudes, properly understood, constitute the Sufi school.
Idries Shah
#47. Miracles, to the Sufi, are not evidential, they are instrumental.
Idries Shah
#48. In the desert there is no sign that says, Thou shalt not eat stones. - Sufi proverb
Margaret Atwood
#49. In Sufi terms, there are two very interesting notions of transcendence. One is to gaze out at the universe and to comprehend that what you see out there reflects what you are. The other one is to look inside yourself and recognise that the universe is present there.
Mohsin Hamid
#50. Sufi Teachers are not, as you might hope, people who make you feel peace and harmony.
Idries Shah
#51. A modern story of Mullah Nasrudin, the Sufi teacher and holy fool, tells of him entering a bank and trying to cash a check. The teller asks him to please identify himself. Nasrudin reaches in his pocket and pulls out a small mirror. Looking into it, he says, "Yep, that's me all right." Meditation
Jack Kornfield
#52. He who is fortunately enlightened [the Sufi]
Knows that sophistry is from the devil and love from Adam.
Idries Shah
#53. It is axiomatic that the attempt to become a Sufi through a desire for personal power as normally understood will not succeed.
Idries Shah
#54. I'm a Sufi Muslim, I would say. I believe in using the medium to create a good vibration because art is so important to society. Some projects I don't do because I feel that it's going to create a bad vibe. I don't do propaganda films that are anti another religion, anti-Muslim or anti-Hindu.
A.R. Rahman
#55. Kunley belongs to a spiritual school of thought known as crazy wisdom. Every religion has its branch of crazy wisdom. The Christians have their Fools for Christ. The Muslims have their Sufi Mast-Qalanders. The Jews have Woody Allen. Yet none is as crazy, or as wise, as Drukpa Kunley.
Eric Weiner
#56. Music, for me, is vital. Punjabi, Bollywood, Sufi, RnB ... I listen to it all. When I'm not listening to music, you will find me chatting with friends. Off the field, I just let my instincts take over. I certainly don't think about batting, or which bowlers I'm going to face.
Virat Kohli
#57. The Sufi must be able to alternate his thought between the relative and the Absolute, the approximate and the Real.
Idries Shah
#59. The object of Sufi preparatory study, however, being to illustrate, expose and out-manoeuvre superficial ambition.
Idries Shah
#60. He that is purified by love is pure; and he that is absorbed in the Beloved and hath abandoned all else is a Sufi.
Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah.
Idries Shah
#61. People talk of the Sufi way. Wrong. If there is a way, it's not Sufism.
Art Hochberg
#62. In comfort and abundance the Friend raised me. With vein and skin He tailored this ragged body. It's just a robe worn by a Sufi, the heart. The whole universe is a khaneqah1 and He is my Shaikh.
Jalaluddin Rumi
#63. There is a wonderful ancient Sufi saying which I'm going to paraphrase slightly. It says, 'When the heart weeps for what it has lost,' in this case 'heart' means 'ego,' 'when the heart weeps for what it has lost, the spirit rejoices for what it has found.'
Eckhart Tolle
#64. Sufi service has to be the right kind of service; neither servitude nor hypocrisy.
Idries Shah
#65. 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.
Wasif Ali Wasif
#66. There is a life-force within your soul, seek that life.
Rumi
#67. But one may say something and yet not be able to do it. Try, for instance, lifting yourself up by the bootstraps.
Idries Shah
#68. The dance had distilled her and she had become one with the essence of all that is.
Holly Lynn Payne
#69. If you are 'humble', it may help you in ordinary life. If you are not, you will get nowhere in higher things.
Idries Shah
#70. In the bosom of success lie not delights but deprivations
Wasif Ali Wasif
#71. EPITAPH OF JALALUDIN RUMI
When we are dead, seek not our tomb in the earth, but find it in the hearts of men.
Idries Shah
#72. But what else are secrets for if not discovery? That is their nature. Only time stands between a mystery and its rightful master.
Usman T. Malik
#73. 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
Idries Shah
#74. With enough information, it is almost impossible "not" to predict people's action.
Idries Shah
#75. 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
Rumi
#76. You must empty out the dirty water before you fill the pitcher with clean.
Idries Shah
#77. When the eye becomes the heart, the heart becomes the eye.
Wasif Ali Wasif
#78. Death is the protector of life and life is the process of death.
Wasif Ali Wasif
#79. Trust is needed before lessons can be learnt.
Idries Shah
#80. Sleep is a mirror of life in which can be seen the reflection of death.
Wasif Ali Wasif
#81. The Sufis say, "This is not a religion; it is religion
Idries Shah
#83. The aspirant has to be guided by a mentor. The stage at which this guidance can take effect is seldom, if ever, perceptible to the learner.
Idries Shah
#84. When the child is ill, the mother will know how to pray.
Wasif Ali Wasif
#86. Be kind to the hawk and harm the sparrow.
Idries Shah
#88. He who has no light in his heart, what will he gain from the festival of lamps.
Wasif Ali Wasif
#89. 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).
Wasif Ali Wasif
#90. Virtually all organisations known to you work largely by means of your greed.
Idries Shah
#91. The man who knows must discharge a function. The one who does not, cannot arrogate one to himself; he can only try to do so.
Idries Shah
#92. Much travel is needed before the raw man is ripened.
Idries Shah
#93. Do not think that your magic ring will work if you are not yourself Solomon.
Idries Shah
#94. A short time in the presence of the Friends (the Sufis) is better than a hundred years' sincere, obedient dedication.
Idries Shah
#95. When Fortune knocks, open the door,' they say. But why should one make fortune knock, by keeping the door shut?
Idries Shah
#96. I was you
and never knew it.
Rumi
#97. Do not dwell upon whether you will put yourself into the hands of a teacher. You are always in his hands.
Idries Shah
#98. As with any other specialisation, teaching is a vocation, open only to those who are truly capable of discharging its functions.
Idries Shah
#99. Disappointment cannot exist without expectation. The expected apricot is never as sweet when it reaches the mouth.
Idries Shah
#100. Sufism is education, in that it has a body of knowledge which it transmits to those who have not got it.
Idries Shah
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
