Sufi Quotes

“The moment you shine the light, the darkness vanishes. Darkness exists only before there is light.”
― M.R. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, To Die Before Death: The Sufi Way of Life

“Each image painted
on the canvas of existence
is the form
of the artist himself.
Eternal Ocean
spews forth new waves.
„Waves“ we call them;
but there is only the Sea.

(p. 77)”
― Fakhruddin Iraqi, Fakhruddin Iraqi: Divine Flashes

“So then where is the kingdom of God in man? It is in the heart. That is heaven. That is God. The heart is the station of God. All that matters is there. This is where God, the soul, and the light of wisdom exist. This is a temple of God which is formed as an atom within an atom, heart within the heart, the cjalb within the cjalb. It is within what is within. It cannot be destroyed by the five elements. You must understand this. It can never be destroyed. (p. 96)”
― M.R. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, To Die Before Death: The Sufi Way of Life

“you can't go to Heaven by pushing past other”
― Zain Hashmi, A Blessed Olive Tree: A Spiritual Journey in Twenty Short Stories

“The just Witness is the Beloved‘s Eye. (p. 292)”
― William C. Chittick, The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi

“Your journey is towards your homeland. Remember you are travelling from the world of appearances to the world of Reality. – Abdul Khaliq Ghujduwani”
― Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Travelling the Path of Love: Sayings of Sufi Masters

“When you seek God, seek Him in your heart. – Yunus Emre”
― Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Travelling the Path of Love: Sayings of Sufi Masters

“Sufis describe the heart as a mirror which the wayfarer polishes and polishes with aspiration and
inner work, until no imperfection remains. Then the mirror of the heart can reflect the true light of
the Beloved.”
― Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Travelling the Path of Love: Sayings of Sufi Masters

“By means of the Divine Lights the heart becomes polished so that it shines like a polished mirror. When it becomes a mirror one can see in it the reflection of all existing things and the reflection of the Kingdom of God as they really are . When one sees the Glory and Majesty of God in His Realm then all the lights become one light and the chest becomes full with this shining light. He is like a
man who observes his reflection in a mirror and sees in it at the same time the reflection of all that is before and behind him. Now when a ray of sun hits the mirror the whole house becomes flooded with light from the meeting of these two lights: the light of the sun-ray and the light of the mirror. Similarly the heart: when it is polished and shining it beholds the Realm of Divine Glory and the
Divine Glory becomes revealed to it. –  Al-Hakim at-Tirmidhi”
― Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Travelling the Path of Love: Sayings of Sufi Masters

“The Sufi tradition is like a vast garden in which are cultivated many flowers of different scents and colors, each sweet and beautiful, each reflecting one aspect of the garden of paradise.”
― Fakhruddin Iraqi, Fakhruddin Iraqi: Divine Flashes

“To the eye of the true Witness, no more than One is to be seen –
but since this One Face shows Itself in two mirrors,
each mirror will display a different face.
(p. 73)”
― Fakhruddin Iraqi, Fakhruddin Iraqi: Divine Flashes

“Majnun may gaze at Layla‘s beauty, but this Layla is only a mirror […] God with Majnun‘s eye looks upon His own beauty in Layla, and through Majnun He loves Himself.”
― Fakhruddin Iraqi, Fakhruddin Iraqi: Divine Flashes

“If You are Everything
then who are all these people?
And if I am nothing
what's all this noise about?
You are Totality,
everything is You. Agreed.
Then that which is "other-than-You"-
what is it?
Oh, indeed I know:
Nothing exists but You
...”
― Fakhruddin Iraqi, Fakhruddin Iraqi: Divine Flashes

“There are no „others“. What appears to be „other than God“ is in fact foam upon the Ocean, forms manifesting meanings, the Hidden Treasure displaying itself outwardly, sunlight upon a wall. All multiplicity is the manifestation of Unity. (p. 304)”
― William C. Chittick, The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi

“One of the attributes of the saint is that he has no fear, for fear is anticipating some disagreeable event that might come or expecting that something beloved might pass away in the future. The saint is concerned only with the present moment. He has no future to fear.”
― Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Travelling the Path of Love: Sayings of Sufi Masters

“Be in this world as if you are a traveller, a passer-by, with your clothes and shoes full of dust. Sometimes you sit under the shade of a tree, sometimes you walk in the desert. Be always a passer-by, for this is not home. – Hadith of the Prophet”
― Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Travelling the Path of Love: Sayings of Sufi Masters

“Four thousand years before God created these bodies, He created the souls and kept them beside Himself and shed a light upon them. He knew what quantity each soul received and He showed favor to each in proportion to its illumination. The souls remained all that time in light, until they became fully nourished. Those who in this world live in joy and agreement with one another must have been akin to one another in that place. Here they love one another and are called the friends of God, and they are brothers who love one another for God’s sake. These souls know one another by smell, like horses. – Sheikh Abu-Said Abul-Khayr ”
― Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Travelling the Path of Love: Sayings of Sufi Masters

“The perfect mystic is not an ecstatic devotee lost in contemplation of Oneness, nor a saintly recluse shunning all commerce with mankind, but “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. – Abu Said ibn Abi al-Khair ”
― Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Travelling the Path of Love: Sayings of Sufi Masters

“There is a polish for everything that taketh away rust;
and the polish of the heart is the invocation of Allâh. – Hadith of the Prophet”
― Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Travelling the Path of Love: Sayings of Sufi Masters

“God placed within the heart the knowledge of Him, and so the heart became lit by God’s Light. By this light He gave the heart eyes to see. Then God spoke in a parable and said, “Compared to a niche wherein is a lamp.” The lamp of the Divine Light is in the hearts of those who believe in the Oneness of God. – Al-Hakim at-Tirmidhi”
― Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Travelling the Path of Love: Sayings of Sufi Masters

“By means of the Divine Lights the heart becomes polished so that it shines like a polished mirror. When it becomes a mirror one can see in it the reflection of all existing things and the reflection of the Kingdom of God as they really are . When one sees the Glory and Majesty of God in His Realm then all the lights become one light and the chest becomes full with this shining light. He is like a man who observes his reflection in a mirror and sees in it at the same time the reflection of all that is before and behind him. Now when a ray of sun hits the mirror the whole house becomes flooded with light from the meeting of these two lights: the light of the sun-ray and the light of the mirror. Similarly the heart: when it is polished and shining it beholds the Realm of Divine Glory and the Divine Glory becomes revealed to it. – Al-Hakim at-Tirmidhi”
― Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Travelling the Path of Love: Sayings of Sufi Masters

“Inside this robe there is only God.”
― Shaikh Abu-Saeed Abil-Kheir

“We will attain a state where Allah's prophets and saints become our relatives who will come to meet us and talk with us. (p. 67)”
― M.R. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, To Die Before Death: The Sufi Way of Life

“So then where is the kingdom of God in man? It is in the heart. That is heaven. That is God. The heart is the station of God. All that matters is there. This is where God, the soul, and the light of wisdom exist. This is a temple of God which is formed as an atom within an atom, heart within the heart, the qalb within the qalb. It is within what is within. It cannot be destroyed by the five elements. You must understand this. It can never be destroyed...(p. 96)”
― M.R. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, To Die Before Death: The Sufi Way of Life

“Iraqi became a work of art before producing works of art. If he sang the love of God in verses of great beauty, it is because his soul had itself become a song of God, a melody in harmony with, and a strain of, the music issuing from the abode of the Beloved. Iraqi was a gnostic who spoke in the language of love. For him, as for Sufism in general, love is not juxtaposed to knowledge. It is realized knowledge. The Truth, which is like a crystal or a shining star in the mind, becomes wine when it is lived and realized. It inundates the whole of man‘s being, plucking the roots of his profane consciousness from this world of impermanence and bringing about an inebriation that must of necessity result from the contact between the soul of man and the infinite world of the Spirit. But Iraqi was a Sufi gifted particularly in expressing the „mysteries of Union“ in the language of love. (p. xi)”
― Fakhruddin Iraqi, Fakhruddin Iraqi: Divine Flashes

“The Lama‘at of Iraqi belongs to a particular type of Sufi literature in which the purest doctrines of gnosis (al-ma‘rifah) were expressed in the language of love (al-mahabbah).”
― Fakhruddin Iraqi, Fakhruddin Iraqi: Divine Flashes

“The more I gaze
at Your face, the more
my eyes incline
toward Your vision
like one who dies of thirst
by the ocean shore,
lips to the wave,
thfrstier and thirstier.”
― Fakhruddin Iraqi, Fakhruddin Iraqi: Divine Flashes

“The more I gaze
at Your face, the more
my eyes incline
toward Your vision
like one who dies of thirst
by the ocean shore,
lips to the wave,
thirstier and thirstier.”
― Fakhruddin Iraqi, Fakhruddin Iraqi: Divine Flashes

“Once we see the world for what it is, we see that it is nothing but dhikr Allâh—a reminder of God, a mention of God, a remembrance of God. Our response to the world can only be to follow its lead—to mention and to remember God. “Everything is accursed,” says the hadîth, “except dhikr Allâh.” But everything is dhikr Allâh, so nothing is accursed. The alchemy of dhikr transmutes the accursed into the blessed. The place of that dhikr, where God becomes truly present and man becomes truly blessed, is the heart. – William C. Chittick (On the Cosmology of Dhikr, p. 63)”
― James S. Cutsinger, Paths to the Heart: Sufism and the Christian East

“En büyük aşk, insanların aşkı.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Shape of A Human: Our America Their America