Browse by: Quotation Source | Entire Living Book | The Seeker | The Sacred
Share in the accounts and discoveries of the many individuals who, just like you, set out to find new, true answers that could stand up to the test of passing time with its ever-changing conditions. Welcome these inward and uplifting thoughts as if they were your own, for in one sense… they are.
Sweet are the uses of adversity.
Someone once asked Dhu’l-Nun, “When does the Sufi reach his goal?”
He said, “When he is as he was where he was before he was.”
The chief of our concerns is that of ourselves, yet how often have we not been told by the inner voice, that to pursue our own interests at the expense of others would be to do wrong! So we imagine that we are sometimes obeying the impulse of nature, but all the while we are resisting it. In listening to the voice of our senses, we turn a deaf ear to the dictates of our heart.
Let love be your guide and you will always find what you’re looking for.
The simple heart that freely asks in love, obtains.
Give yourself more diligently to reflection; come to know yourself.
Freedom is not a constant attribute which we either “have” or “have not.” In fact, there is no such thing as “freedom” except as a word and an abstract concept. There is only one reality: the act of freeing ourselves in the process of making choices. In this process the degree of our capacity to make choices varies with each act, with our practice of life.
Recognize what is in your sight, and what is hidden will become clear to you.
Dare to believe only in yourselves.
Go within, or go without.
If you want to be an astronomer you must go to the observatory, take a telescope, study the stars and planets, and then you will become an astronomer. Each science must have its own methods. I could preach you thousands of sermons but they would not make you religious, until you first practiced the method. These are the truths of the sages of all countries, of all ages, men pure and unselfish, who had no motive but to do good to the world. They all declare that they have found some truth higher than that the senses can bring to us, and they challenge verification. They say to you, take up the method and practice honestly… So we must work faithfully, using the prescribed methods, and light will come.
Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem.
Loud clamour is always more or less insane.
Why should you want? Behold, the earth hath roots;
Within this mile break forth a hundred springs;
The oaks bear mast, the biers scarlet hips:
The bounteous housewife, nature, on each bush
Lays her full mess before you. Want! why want?
Progress is the law of life; man is not man as yet.
On a Drop of Dew
See how the orient dew,
Shed from the bosom of the morn
Into the blowing roses,
Yet careless of its mansion new,
For the clear region where ’twas born
Round in itself incloses:
And in its little globe’s extent,
Frames as it can its native element.
How it the purple flow’r does slight,
Scarce touching where it lies,
But gazing back upon the skies,
Shines with a mournful light,
Like its own tear,
Because so long divided from the sphere.
Restless it rolls and unsecure,
Trembling lest it grow impure,
Till the warm sun pity its pain,
And to the skies exhale it back again.
So the soul, that drop, that ray
Of the clear fountain of eternal day,
Could it within the human flow’r be seen,
Remembering still its former height,
Shuns the sweet leaves and blossoms green,
And recollecting its own light,
Does, in its pure and circling thoughts, express
The greater heaven in an heaven less.
In how coy a figure wound,
Every way it turns away:
So the world excluding round,
Yet receiving in the day,
Dark beneath, but bright above,
Here disdaining, there in love.
How loose and easy hence to go,
How girt and ready to ascend,
Moving but on a point below,
It all about does upwards bend.
Such did the manna’s sacred dew distill,
White and entire, though congealed and chill,
Congealed on earth : but does, dissolving, run
Into the glories of th’ almighty sun.
Not to understand a treasure’s worth… is cause of half the poverty we feel, and makes the world the wilderness it is.
The realization of Truth is brought about by perception, and not in the least by ten millions of acts.
The humble knowledge of thyself is a surer way to God than the deepest search after science.
The first step to self-knowledge is self-distrust. Nor can we attain to any kind of knowledge, except by a like process.
Does a philosopher seek people to come and hear him? Does he not, rather, by his own nature, attract those who will be enriched by him? He is like the warming sun. What physician seeks for men to come and be healed?
We must follow, not force Providence.
We are taking that which is bad for that which is good, and that which is a dream for that which is real. Soul is the only reality, and we have forgotten it.
One by one (bright gifts from Heaven)
Joys are sent thee here below;
Take them readily when given,
Ready too to let them go…
One by one thy griefs shall meet thee,
Do not fear an armed band;
One will fade as others greet thee;
Shadows passing through the land.
We are often wiser than we fancy ourselves to be… In the great moments of life, when a man decides upon an important step, his action is directed not so much by any clear knowledge of the right thing to do, as by an inner impulse — you may almost call it intuition — proceeding from the deepest foundations of his being.
