Sufi Wisdom Quotes

#1. One day the cub will become a wolf, even if it has been reared among the sons of man.

Idries Shah

#2. If behaviors become equivalent it is possible for knowledge to become equivalent (for any two individuals).

Wasif Ali Wasif

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

Wasif Ali Wasif

#4. Those who say 'I am ready to learn', or 'I am not ready to learn' are as often mistaken as they are correct in their surmise.

Idries Shah

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

Saadi

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

Wasif Ali Wasif

#7. 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.

Amir Khusrau

#8. 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

#9. With faith one attains and realises peace and harmony. With doubt one destroys and gains freedom to move ontowards.

Fazal Inayat-Khan

#10. The Choice of a purpose is more important than success.

Wasif Ali Wasif

#11. He had found riches beyond worldly imagination. He had found the never ending well of love.

Soroosh Shahrivar

#12. 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.

Idries Shah

#13. In reality, every reality is a veil over reality.

Wasif Ali Wasif

#14. 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

Amir Khusrau

#15. A Sufi has a right to be served, but he has no right to demand. Maruf Karkhi of Khorasan

Idries Shah

#16. Have the nature of a dervish: then wear a stylish cap.

Idries Shah

#17. The door of illumination is open to those for whom other doors are closed.

Idries Shah

#18. The sort of man who, throwing a stone upon the ground, would miss.

Idries Shah

#19. Love was supposed to be the easiest path to divinity

Soroosh Shahrivar

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

Idries Shah

#21. Investigation after declaration of submission leads astray.

Wasif Ali Wasif

#22. Each flies with its own kind: pigeon with pigeon, hawk with hawk.

Idries Shah

#23. Sleep is the boundary between being/existence and not-being/non-existence.

Wasif Ali Wasif

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

Idries Shah

#25. 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

#26. The object of Sufi preparatory study, however, being to illustrate, expose and out-manoeuvre superficial ambition.

Idries Shah

#27. MAGHRIBI: Learning is in activity. Learning through words alone is minor activity.

Idries Shah

#28. Better the demon which makes you improve than the angel who threatens.

Idries Shah

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

Wasif Ali Wasif

#30. An old fool is worse than a young one: For the young may always grow wise. (Zohair)

Idries Shah

#31. 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

#32. Life abides between life as if it were an island amidst its own ocean

Wasif Ali Wasif

#33. Life is not only Newton, it is also Milton.

Wasif Ali Wasif

#34. Pick up a bee from kindness, and learn the limitations of kindness.

Idries Shah

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

Wasif Ali Wasif

#36. Practise your knowledge, for knowledge without practice is a body without life

Idries Shah

#37. He who is fortunately enlightened [the Sufi]
Knows that sophistry is from the devil and love from Adam.

Idries Shah

#38. Do we find ourself or does our self get demolished?

Donna Goddard

#39. Definitions from Mulla Do-Piaza
Wisdom: Something you can learn without knowing it.

Idries Shah

#40. Ibn El-Arabi wrote, 'The Teacher is he who hears you, then unveils you to yourself

Idries Shah

#41. Too much kindness towards the fox may mean doom for the rabbit.

Idries Shah

#42. Ignorance is the Mother of Opposition

Idries Shah

#43. Much travel is needed before the raw man is ripened.

Idries Shah

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

Idries Shah

#45. 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

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

Wasif Ali Wasif

#47. Do not destroy anybody's peace. You will find peace.

Wasif Ali Wasif

#48. Be kind to the hawk and harm the sparrow.

Idries Shah

#49. Sufism is known by means of itself.

Idries Shah

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

Wasif Ali Wasif

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

Idries Shah

#52. A Sufi school comes into being in order to flourish and disappear, not to leave traces in mechanical ritual, or anthropologically survivals.

Idries Shah

#53. Sufism," according to the Sufi, "is an adventure in living, necessary adventure.

Idries Shah

#54. The Sufis say, "This is not a religion; it is religion

Idries Shah

#55. Sleep is a mirror of life in which can be seen the reflection of death.

Wasif Ali Wasif

#56. Trust is needed before lessons can be learnt.

Idries Shah

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

Wasif Ali Wasif

#58. When the eye becomes the heart, the heart becomes the eye.

Wasif Ali Wasif

#59. 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

#60. 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

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

Idries Shah

#62. In the bosom of success lie not delights but deprivations

Wasif Ali Wasif

#63. 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

#64. The would-be Sufi needs guidance precisely because books, texts, while telling you what is needed, do not tell you when.

Idries Shah

#65. It is experience which teaches, not controversy based on supposed logic and assumptions of what is likely to be true.

Idries Shah

#66. Nothing can defile the Sufi, and he in fact purifies everything." Abu-Turab al-Nakhsabi.

Idries Shah

#67. A yellow dog is brother to the jackal.

Idries Shah

#68. 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

#69. It is necessary to note," says Rumi, "that opposite things work together, even though nominally opposed" (Fihi Ma Fihi).

Idries Shah

#70. A man is happy who is happy with his Naseeb(allotted portion).

Wasif Ali Wasif

#71. 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

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

Idries Shah

#73. 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

#74. 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

#75. 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

#76. Deteriorated science is a cult, so is imitative or deteriorated Sufism.

Idries Shah

#77. 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

#78. Sufism is education, in that it has a body of knowledge which it transmits to those who have not got it.

Idries Shah

#79. Disappointment cannot exist without expectation. The expected apricot is never as sweet when it reaches the mouth.

Idries Shah

#80. As with any other specialisation, teaching is a vocation, open only to those who are truly capable of discharging its functions.

Idries Shah

#81. A short time in the presence of the Friends (the Sufis) is better than a hundred years' sincere, obedient dedication.

Idries Shah

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

Idries Shah