Effendi Quotes & Sayings

All pain is per se and especially in excess, destructive and ultimately fatal in its nature and effects. — James Young

We should be happy to see toads in our gardens. — Andrienne Soutter-Perrot

Yes, I've changed. I used to believe in everything that you do, maybe even more firmly. But then in Smyrna, Talib-effendi said to me: 'When you see a young man reaching for the sky, grab him by the leg and pull him back down to the ground.' And he pulled me back down to the ground. 'You are destined to live here,' he scolded me. 'So live here! And live as nicely as you can, but without shame. It is better that God ask you: why did you not do that? rather than: why did you do that?"'
"And what are you now?"
"A wanderer on wide roads where I meet good and bad people, who have the same worries and troubles as people do here, who have the same trivial joys as people do everywhere."
"What would happen if everyone took your path?"
"The world would be happier. Maybe. — Mesa Selimovic

The purely Great
Whose soul no siren passion could unsphere,
Thou nameless, now a power and mixed with fate. — James Russell Lowell

The time for the destruction of the world and its people hath arrived. — Shoghi Effendi

For what pleasure can compare the pleasure of bringing joy and hope to other hearts. The more we make others happy the greater will be our own happiness and the deeper our sense of having served humanity. — Shoghi Effendi

It was with an unusual intensity of pleasure, a pleasure destined to have a lasting effect on him, that Swann remarked Odette's resemblance to the Zipporah of that Alessandro de Mariano to whom more people willingly give his popular surname, Botticelli, now that it suggests not so much the actual work of the Master as that false and banal conception of it which has of late obtained common currency. — Marcel Proust

Time, tide and cocktail hour wait, as it were, for no man. — Neil Gaiman

God is pursuing with omnipotent passion a worldwide purpose of gathering joyful worshipers for Himself from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. He has an inexhaustible enthusiasm for the supremacy of His name among the nations. Therefore, let us bring our affections into line with His, and, for the sake of His name, let us renounce the quest for worldly comforts and join His global purpose. — John Piper

We must not only be patient with others, infinitely patient, but also with our own poor selves. — Shoghi Effendi

Gratitude gets us through the hard stuff...Gratitude always leaves us looking at God and away from dread. — Max Lucado

Our past is not the thing that matters so much in this world as what we intend to do with the future. — Shoghi Effendi

This day was only the first of man similar ones for the emancipated Mole, each of them longer and fuller of interest as the ripening summer moved onward. He learned to swim and to row, and entered into the joy of running water; and with his ear to the reed stems he caught, at intervals, something of what the wind went whispering so constantly among them. — Kenneth Grahame

We cannot segregate the human heart from the environment outside us and say that once one of these is reformed everything will be improved. Man is organic with the world. His inner life moulds the environment and is itself also deeply affected by it. The one acts upon the other and every abiding change in the life of man is the result of these mutual reactions. — Shoghi Effendi

My whole drive is to make sure that music is a common space where we search for beauty and share it. It needs to be louder than any conversation. That's where we have to go as a human race. — Abigail Washburn

The troubles of this world pass,
and what we have left is what we have made of our souls ... — Shoghi Effendi

Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world - only to serve the People of Israel,. Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat. That is why gentiles were created. — Ovadia Yosef

When Dylann Roof walked into a black church, he wanted to start a race war. We didn't let him do that because we didn't cast him as a representative of the white race. We didn't give into his narrative. We did the exact opposite. And I think that we have to be careful not to give into the apocalyptic narrative of ISIS that wants to start a war between Muslims and everybody else. — Chuck Todd

For popular purposes, at least, the aim of literary artists should be similar to that of Rubens in his landscapes, of which, without neglecting the minor traits or finishing, he was chiefly solicitous to present the leading effect, or what we may call the inspiration. — William Benton Clulow

Love & kindness have far greater influence than punishment upon the improvement of human character. — Shoghi Effendi

"The more we search for ourselves, the less likely we are to find ourselves; and the more we search for God, and to serve our fellow-men, the more profoundly will we become acquainted with ourselves, and the more inwardly assured. This is one of the great spiritual laws of life." (From a letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to an individual believer, February 18, 1954) — Shoghi Effendi

It is not sufficient to pray diligently for guidance, but this prayer must be followed by meditation as to the best methods of action and then action itself ... because prayers can only be answered through action and if someone's action is wrong, God can use that method of showing the pathway which is right. — Shoghi Effendi

It is not preaching any rules the world wants, but love and action. — Shoghi Effendi

We must be like the fountain or spring that is continually emptying itself of all that it has and is continually being refilled from an invisible source. To be continually giving out for the good of our fellows undeterred by fear of poverty and reliant on the unfailing bounty of the Source of all wealth and all good
this is the secret of right living. — Shoghi Effendi