Great Sufi Quotes & Sayings

War takes a terrible toll on people, on families. And if war doesn't, then just ordinary life does. It changes them forever. — Ann Rinaldi

Our present intricate humanly consciousness evolved after a long journey of struggle. And the beauty of natural selection is that our struggle against nature made us worthy of being rewarded with the 3 lbs. lump of highly advanced biological computer by our Mother Nature herself. — Abhijit Naskar

There was no doubt that sooner or later we will fight. But we will fight not in the way of the dissidents' protests. We understood that we needed to be as professional as possible. — Anatoly Chubais

Belen shrugs. "It's a perfect plan."
"As easy as falling in love," Mara adds.
"Foolproof," Hector agrees.
I don't deserve such friends. I blink against the sting of threatening tears and say, "All you Joyans are filthy liars. — Rae Carson

Cultivate within yourselves the mighty power of self-discipline. — Gordon B. Hinckley

And that survey is the one we all go back to. When you find one of their original corners, it is like a handshake with the past. — Andro Linklater

What I seek to do is to establish the facts as I see them, or as I understand them, and to engage in constructive dialogue to get good outcomes. — Cory Bernardi

The great Sufi poet and philosopher Rumi once advised his students to write down the three things they most wanted in life. If any item on the list clashes with any other item, Rumi warned, you are destined for unhappiness. Better to live a life of single-pointed focus, he taught. But what about the benefits of living harmoniously among extremes? What if you could somehow create an expansive enough life that you could synchronize seemingly incongruous opposites into a worldview that excludes nothing? — Elizabeth Gilbert

The Hole and the Thread A CERTAIN great Sufi was asked about the role and status of some of his predecessors. He said: 'To erect a small building you may first have to excavate a large hole. 'To make a large carpet you may have to start with a single thread. 'When you can see the building or the carpet, your question is answered. 'But when your question is about the hole in the ground and the thread in the hand, you can only be answered in this parable.' * * * — Idries Shah

The Jesus Trajectory Love is recklessness, not reason. Reason seeks a profit. Loves comes on strong, consuming herself, unabashed. Yet in the midst of suffering, Love proceeds like a millstone, hard-surfaced and straight forward. Having died to self-interest, she risks everything and asks for nothing. Love gambles away every gift God bestows. The words above were written by the great Sufi mystic Jalalludin Rumi.6 But better than almost anything in Christian scripture, they closely describe the trajectory that Jesus himself followed in life. — Cynthia Bourgeault

Islam and Christianity promise eternal paradise to the faithful. And that is a powerful opiate, certainly, the hope of a better life to come. But there's a Sufi story that challenges the notion that people believe only because they need an opiate. Rabe'a al-Adiwiyah, a great woman saint of Sufism, was seem running through the streets of her hometown, Basra, carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When someone asked her what she was doing, she answered, 'I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven of fear of hell, but because He is God. — John Green

Make a destination of the greater truth. — Bob Seger

I encounter one example after another of how relative truth is. — Raoul Wallenberg

I sew his ears on from time to time, sure. — Patrick O'Brian

[Mitt Romney is a] Massachusetts moderate who, in fact, is pretty good at managing the decay." He's "given no evidence in his years in Massachusetts of any ability to change the culture or change the political structure. — Newt Gingrich