Top 100 Sufi Quotes
#1. 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
#2. There is a life-force within your soul, seek that life.
Rumi
#3. But one may say something and yet not be able to do it. Try, for instance, lifting yourself up by the bootstraps.
Idries Shah
#4. The dance had distilled her and she had become one with the essence of all that is.
Holly Lynn Payne
#5. If you are 'humble', it may help you in ordinary life. If you are not, you will get nowhere in higher things.
Idries Shah
#6. 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
#7. 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
#8. In the bosom of success lie not delights but deprivations
Wasif Ali Wasif
#9. 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
#10. 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
#11. Sufis aim to refine human consciousness. This is Sufi mysticism: not mystification or magic, but a specific Path.
Idries Shah
#12. 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
#13. With enough information, it is almost impossible "not" to predict people's action.
Idries Shah
#14. 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
#15. You must empty out the dirty water before you fill the pitcher with clean.
Idries Shah
#16. 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
#17. When the eye becomes the heart, the heart becomes the eye.
Wasif Ali Wasif
#18. The selection and following of a spiritual guide is the most important duty of a Sufi.
Idries Shah
#19. 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
#20. 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
#21. Death is the protector of life and life is the process of death.
Wasif Ali Wasif
#22. Trust is needed before lessons can be learnt.
Idries Shah
#23. There can be no spirituality, according to the Sufi masters, without psychology, psychological insight and sociological balance.
Idries Shah
#24. 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
#25. 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
#26. Sleep is a mirror of life in which can be seen the reflection of death.
Wasif Ali Wasif
#27. 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
#28. The Sufis say, "This is not a religion; it is religion
Idries Shah
#30. 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
#31. A Sufi school comes into being in order to flourish and disappear, not to leave traces in mechanical ritual, or anthropologically survivals.
Idries Shah
#32. A Sufi is one who is not bound by anything nor does he bind anything
Idries Shah
#33. When the child is ill, the mother will know how to pray.
Wasif Ali Wasif
#35. Be kind to the hawk and harm the sparrow.
Idries Shah
#37. He who has no light in his heart, what will he gain from the festival of lamps.
Wasif Ali Wasif
#38. 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
#39. 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
#40. Virtually all organisations known to you work largely by means of your greed.
Idries Shah
#41. To say "yes" to the Sufi way is to say "no" to imagined escapes.
Idries Shah
#42. 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
#43. Much travel is needed before the raw man is ripened.
Idries Shah
#44. Sufism," according to the Sufi, "is an adventure in living, necessary adventure.
Idries Shah
#45. 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
#46. 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
#47. Do not think that your magic ring will work if you are not yourself Solomon.
Idries Shah
#48. A short time in the presence of the Friends (the Sufis) is better than a hundred years' sincere, obedient dedication.
Idries Shah
#49. When Fortune knocks, open the door,' they say. But why should one make fortune knock, by keeping the door shut?
Idries Shah
#50. I was you
and never knew it.
Rumi
#51. Do not dwell upon whether you will put yourself into the hands of a teacher. You are always in his hands.
Idries Shah
#52. As with any other specialisation, teaching is a vocation, open only to those who are truly capable of discharging its functions.
Idries Shah
#53. 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
#54. Disappointment cannot exist without expectation. The expected apricot is never as sweet when it reaches the mouth.
Idries Shah
#55. Sufism is education, in that it has a body of knowledge which it transmits to those who have not got it.
Idries Shah
#56. Please, not again what you studied, how long you spent at it, how many books you wrote, what people thought of you - but: what did you learn?
Idries Shah
#57. If a society has no moral foundations then success is a threat. Every successful person thinks everyone else is a failure, and this is the proof of failure. Conquering the world and dying empty-handed on foreign shores is a paradox of such success.
Wasif Ali Wasif
#58. Study the assumptions behind your actions. Then study the assumptions behind your assumptions.
Idries Shah
#59. The person that you feel yourself to be, according to the Sufis, is a false person, which has no true reality.
Idries Shah
#60. The Sufi way is through knowledge and practice, not through intellect and talk.
Idries Shah
#61. A Sufi is alive to the value of time, and is given, every moment, to what that moment demands.
Idries Shah
#62. Study institutions may become visible when the head is more emptied of imaginings.
Idries Shah
#63. Exercise power by means of kindness, and you may be causing more damage than you could by cruelty. Neither approach is correct.
Idries Shah
#64. Deteriorated science is a cult, so is imitative or deteriorated Sufism.
Idries Shah
#65. You will always have doubts, but only discover them at a useful time for your weakness to point them out.
Idries Shah
#66. 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.
Wasif Ali Wasif
#67. 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.
Idries Shah
#68. 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.
Wasif Ali Wasif
#69. Learning how to learn involves examining assumptions. Mulla Nasrudin tales very often fulfil this funcition.
Idries Shah
#70. 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.
Amir Khusrau
#71. The sufis believe that they can experience something more complete.
Idries Shah
#72. I ask about the sky, but the answer is about a rope.
Idries Shah
#74. Sufis are those who have expunged from their minds the human tendencies of envy and enmity.
Idries Shah
#75. Sufi poetry is, in a sense, self-help poetry about how to live a decent life, how to deal with your mortality.
Mohsin Hamid
#76. The Sufi saying has it: God, to the bee, is something which has TWO stings!
Idries Shah
#77. The human being, whether he realises it or not, is trusting someone or something every moment of the day.
Idries Shah
#79. 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.
Idries Shah
#80. Careful preparation is necessary before people can perceive something which is there all the time.
Idries Shah
#81. A man is happy who is happy with his Naseeb(allotted portion).
Wasif Ali Wasif
#82. ... 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
#83. It is necessary to note," says Rumi, "that opposite things work together, even though nominally opposed" (Fihi Ma Fihi).
Idries Shah
#84. 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.
Idries Shah
#85. Most of the supposedly Sufi organizations, exercises and "orders" are in fact only of archaeological interest.
Idries Shah
#86. A yellow dog is brother to the jackal.
Idries Shah
#87. No one is born beneath this dance. This dance gives birth to you.
Holly Lynn Payne
#88. 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
#89. Real generosity is anonymous to the extent that a man should be prepared even to be considered ungenerous rather than explain it to others.
Idries Shah
#90. Nothing can defile the Sufi, and he in fact purifies everything." Abu-Turab al-Nakhsabi.
Idries Shah
#91. It is experience which teaches, not controversy based on supposed logic and assumptions of what is likely to be true.
Idries Shah
#92. The would-be Sufi needs guidance precisely because books, texts, while telling you what is needed, do not tell you when.
Idries Shah
#93. One cannot learn from someone whom one distrusts.
Idries Shah
#94. Life abides between life as if it were an island amidst its own ocean
Wasif Ali Wasif
#95. Investigation after declaration of submission leads astray.
Wasif Ali Wasif
#97. Only the search for truth is valid, the desire for wisdom the motive. The method is assimilation, not study.
Idries Shah
#99. 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
#100. The sort of man who, throwing a stone upon the ground, would miss.
Idries Shah
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