Shams Quotes & Sayings

Was he talking about the Love of God or the love between a woman and a man? Could he be referring to us? Was there such a thing as 'us'?

Unaware of my thoughts, Shams continued.
"I don't care about haram or halal. I'd rather extinguish the fire in hell and burn heaven, so that people could start loving God for no other reason than love. — Elif Shafak

The messiah arrives when it is already too late. He arrives when doomsday has already struck — Soroosh Shahrivar

A Mystic And A Drunk

The Universe turns on an axis.
Let my soul circle around a table
like a beggar, like a planet
rolling in the vast, totally helpless and free.

The knight and the castle move jaggedly
about the chessboard, but they're actually
centered on the king. They circle.

If love is your center, a ring
gets put on your finger.

Something inside the moth
is made of fire.

A mystic touches the annihilating tip
of pure nothing.

A drunkard thinks peeing is absolution.
Lord, take these impurities from me.

The lord replies, First, understand
the nature of impurity. If your key is bent,
the lock will not open.

I fall silent.
King Shams has come.
Always when I close, he opens. — Jalaluddin Rumi

The inspirations of today are the shams of tomorrow the purpose has departed. — Elbert Hubbard

Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision. — Aldous Huxley

There is only truth to be found - no lies, no shams, no illusions, no hypocrisy. Just a truthful place, where all beings are governed by a set of perfect laws that have never changed and never will. — Eustace Conway

When asked his name, he introduced himself as Shams of Tabriz and said he was a wandering dervish searching for God high and low. — Elif Shafak

Better, Josef, far better, to have the courage to change your convictions. Duty and faithfulness are shams, curtains to hide behind. Self-liberation means a sacred no, even to duty. — Irvin D. Yalom

She had learnt many things since the days of her first rebellion, and she knew now that this matter of the man friend and nothing else in the world is the central issue in the emancipation of women. The difficulty of him is latent in every other restriction of which women complain. The complete emancipation of women will come with complete emancipation of humanity from jealousy - and no sooner. All other emancipations are shams until a woman may go about as freely with this man as with that, and nothing remains for emancipation when she can. — H.G.Wells

Shams was the wind that would blow the scholar's turban off from Rumi's head, and turn a quiet academic into an enthusiastic lover of God. — Cihan Okuyucu

The past is a whirlpool. If you let it dominate your present moment, it will suck you in," said Shams as if he had read my thoughts. "Time is just an illusion. What you need is to live this very moment. That is all that matters. — Elif Shafak

The impetus he had gained from the whimsical seraph known as Syoshant had been short-lived — Soroosh Shahrivar

Wherever you go, east, west, north or south, think of it as a journey into yourself! The one who travels into itself travels the world. — Shams Tabrizi

The real dirt is not outside, but inside, in our hearts.
We can wash all stains with water. The only one we can't remove is the grudge and the bad intentions sticking to our hearts. — Shams-i Tabrizi

You will learn by reading,
But you will understand with LOVE. — Rumi

He was Lenin in a Lamborghini. He was Gandhi with a gun — Soroosh Shahrivar

These little black circular shapes were a result of him being a carrier of a parasite known as Toxoplasma gondii — Soroosh Shahrivar

Be sure that someday you'll praise and thank God for your unanswered prayers that once you had wept for them. — Shams Tabrizi

The yachts' berth was next to the Yas Marina Circuit, where Formula 1 would come into town once a year. At night, when the lights on its orbicular architecture switched on, the circuit would radiate like a constellation of stars — Soroosh Shahrivar

One Swaying Being

Love is not condescension, never that,
nor books, nor any marking on paper,
nor what people say of each other.
Love is a tree with branches reaching into eternity
and roots set deep in eternity, and no trunk!
Have you seen it?
The mind cannot.
Your desiring cannot.
The longing you feel for this love comes from inside you.
When you become the Friend,
your longing will be as the man in the ocean
who holds to a piece of wood.
Eventually wood, man, and ocean
become one swaying being,
Shams Tabriz, the secret of God. — Jalaluddin Rumi

Shams, my body is a candle touched with fire. — Jalaluddin Rumi

We're buying curtains, babe, that activity hardly requires a cart," he noted.
"We're in a home store, Tate," I replied, thinking my answer said all.
"And?" he returned, stating plainly my answer did not say all.
"A mega home store," I added.
"And?"
"And, I came here a few days ago to buy you sheets. I ended up buying you two sets of sheets, six new pillows, a down comforter, a comforter cover and shams. That happens in a home store," I educated him. "You come in needing a spatula and you go out with a spatula, new kitchen towels, candles, candle holders, cool things to seal open chip bags, a variety of frames, a soap dispenser and a new vacuum cleaner. — Kristen Ashley

If you expect respect from others, show it first to yourself. You can't expect from others what you don't give to yourself. — Shams Tabrizi

Love was supposed to be the easiest path to divinity — Soroosh Shahrivar

Don't search for heaven and hell in the future. Both are now present. Whenever we manage to love without expectations, calculations, negotiations, we are indeed in heaven. Whenever we fight, hate, we are in hell. — Shams Tabrizi

The only response to stupidity and ignorance was silence — Soroosh Shahrivar

We are nothing more than a dot amongst the billions of organisms on the Hillis plot — Soroosh Shahrivar

The spirit is the mirror; the body is the rust.
(Divan-i-Shamsi Tabriz) — Idries Shah

Whoever lives as he sees fit will not die as he sees fit. — Shams Tabrizi

Shams is a trumpet note of light
that starts the atoms spinning,
a wind that comes at dawn
tasting of bread and salt.
Move to the edge and over. Fly with the wings
he gives, and if you get tired, lie down,
but keep opening inside your soul. — Rumi

So you see, don't judge the way other people connect to God, concluded Shams. To each his own way and his own prayer. God does not take us at our word. He looks deep into our hearts. It is not the ceremonies or rituals that make a difference, but whether our hearts are sufficiently pure or not. — Elif Shafak

Writing it was the best part, but clicking the enter button was the most difficult. — Ali Shams

The work of fate is a mystery — Soroosh Shahrivar

It is pointless trying to know where the way leads. Think only about your first step, the rest will come. — Shams Tabrizi

Remove all the walls and curtains so you can get closer and purely love. Have principles but do not use them to exclude or to judge the others. Stay far from idols, specially from those you made from your own principles. Have a powerful faith, but do not play the powerful. — Shams Tabrizi

If the human being is a proud and honorable creature, he shouldn't forget to act that way, even if he falls, even if the whole world is against him, even if he ends as a slave. — Shams Tabrizi

We had little idea that this was the beginning of a much greater journey towards finding our true self, with Rumi and Shams as our fearless guides. — Jamila Hammad

We can only learn and advance with contradictions.
The faithful inside should meet the doubtful. The doubtful should meet the faithful. Human slowly advances and becomes mature when he accepts his contradictions. — Shams-i Tabrizi

And envy, envious of a time when the poet, the mystic, the scientist and the statesman were nobler than the merchant. — Soroosh Shahrivar

A good man complains of no one; he does not look to faults. — Shams Tabrizi

Politics unfortunately abounds in shams that must be treated reverentially for every politician who would succeed. If you are the sort of man whose stomach revolts against treating shams reverentially, you will be well advised to stay out of politics altogether and set up as a prophet; your prophecies may perhaps sow good seed for some future harvest. But as a politician you would be impotent. For at any given time the bulk of your countrymen believe firmly and devoutly, not only in various things that are worthy of belief, but also in illusions of one kind and another; and they will never submit to have their affairs managed for them by one who appears not to share in their credulity. — F. S. Oliver

There may be one fault in a man that conceals a thousand qualities, or one excellence that conceals a thousand faults. The little indicates much. — Shams Tabrizi

It is easy to love perfection. The difficulty consists in loving the human with his good and bad. We mostly know as much as we love. Only loving God but not its creatures, you can never really know, neither really love. — Shams Tabrizi

He was everyone and every living creature in one ecstatic motion. — Soroosh Shahrivar

I don't want to pass because I can't stand insincerities and shams. I am just as much Negro as any of the others identified with the race. — Fredi Washington

The silent colossal National Lie that is the support and confederate of all the tyrannies and shams and inequalities and unfairnesses that afflict the peoples - that is the one to throw bricks and sermons at. — Mark Twain

If our houses, or clothes, our household furniture and utensils are not works of art, they are either wretched makeshifts, or, what is worse, degrading shams of better things. — William Morris

If parts are always changing, the whole remains the same. A dead good man is replaced by a good man, a dead bad man is replaced by a bad man. While the whole remains the same, every day is different. — Shams Tabrizi

Mercilessness was not a bad trait to have in the corporate universe. — Soroosh Shahrivar

It is never late to ask yourself "Am I ready to change my life, am I ready to change myself?". However old we are, whatever we went through, it is always possible to reborn. If each day is a copy of the last one, what a pity! Every breath is a chance to reborn. But to reborn into a new life, you have to die before dying. — Shams Tabrizi

You think you cannot live anymore. You think that the light of your soul has been put out and that you will stay in the dark forever. But when you are engulfed by such solid darkness, when you have both eyes closed to the world, a third eye opens in your heart. And only then do you come to realize that eyesight conflicts with inner knowledge. No eye sees so clear and sharp as the eye of love. After grief comes another season, another valley, another you. And the lover who is nowhere to be found, you start to see everywhere.
You see him in the drop of water that falls into the ocean, in the high tide that follows the waxing of the moon, or in the morning wind that spreads its fresh smell; you see him in the geomancy symbols in the sand, in the tiny particles of rock glittering under the sun, in the smile of a newborn baby, or in your throbbing vein. How can you say Shams is gone when he is everywhere and in everything? — Elif Shafak

These displays made it clear that the truly dedicated homemaker matched her comforter to her pillow shams to her washcloths to her bedskirt to her toothbrush holder. — Christina Bartolomeo

The Post-Dispatch will serve no party but the people; be no organ of Republicanism, but the organ of truth; will follow no causes bit its conclusions; will not support the Administration, but criticize it; will oppose all frauds and shams wherever or whatever they are; will advocate principles and ideas rather than prejudices and partisanship. — Joseph Pulitzer

A life without love is a waste. "Should I look for spiritual love, or material, or physical love?", don't ask yourself this question. Discrimination leads to discrimination. Love doesn't need any name, category or definition. Love is a world itself. Either you are in, at the center ... either you are out, yearning. — Shams-i Tabrizi

Surrendering is not a weakness. At the contrary it is strength. The surrender stops living in boiling water and starts living in a secure place. — Shams Tabrizi

Eshgham, a term of endearment meaning my love — Soroosh Shahrivar

The sharia is like a candle," said Shams of Tabriz. "It provides us with much valuable light. But let us not forget that a candle helps us to go from one place to another in the dark. If we forget where we are headed and instead concentrate on the candle, what good is it? — Elif Shafak

God has set apart His people from before the foundation of the world to be His chosen and peculiar inheritance. We are sanctified in Christ Jesus by the Holy Spirit when he subdues our corruptions, imparts to us grace, and leads us onward in the divine walk and life of faith. Christian men are not to be used for anything but God. They are a set-apart people; they are vessels of mercy, they are not for the devil's use, not for their own use, not for the world's use, but for their Master's use. He has made them on purpose to be used entirely, solely and wholly for Him. O Christian people, be holy, for Christ is holy. Do not pollute that holy Name wherewith you are named. Let your family life, your personal life, your business life, be as holy as Christ your Lord would have it to be. Shall saints be shams when sinners are so real? — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The timepiece had been a birthday gift from Arian, his nineteen-year-old cousin in Tehran. It was plastered with pastoral steel and had the Faravahar hieroglyph sketched on it. This ancient pictogram was the symbol of a guardian angel. A remnant of a primeval daemon designed to protect the Persians. The clock's circumference was decorated with the flowers of life and in the middle there was a scripture written in cuneiform that read Good Deeds, Good Thoughts & Good Words. — Soroosh Shahrivar

When you oppose the shaykh, it's like the slave who kills himself over a quarrel with his master. Hey, why are you killing yourself over a quarrel?He says, So my master will suffer loss. — Shams Tabrizi

The sword of Zulfiqar is a perfect fusion of power and function — Soroosh Shahrivar

Death is transcendental. And no space or time could ever prevent it from happening — Soroosh Shahrivar

Everything for you stems from a physical need. Most of you think with either your belly or what's below it — Soroosh Shahrivar

Do not worry about tricks and cheaters. If some people are trying to trap and hurt you, Allah is also trapping them. Hole diggers will always fall in their holes. No bad remains unpunished, and no good remains without being awarded, so have faith in justice and let the rest be. — Shams Tabrizi

In searching for himself, he had come to understand that he was defined by selflessness — Soroosh Shahrivar

I like to hope that Rumi's poems, even in translation, carry the essence of the transforming friendship of Rumi and Shams, that the sun can reappear, whole and radiant in any one of us at any moment. — Rumi

The life we live is just a colourful and deposit toy.
Some of us take it so seriously and fight and cry for it.
Some of us break and throw it.
Either we give extreme importance, either not enough.
Better to stay far from extremes. — Shams Tabrizi

Love liberates us from all primal urges — Soroosh Shahrivar

They were nothing more than modern day pagan worshippers. Congregants of a religion built on greed and hedonism. The trading floor served as their shrine; the phones as their Holy Grail; and the clients as the prophets who would entitle them to choose between putting the next down payment on a Lamborghini or a Mercedes — Soroosh Shahrivar

If you are insulted, if you are accused, if they gossip about you, don't say anything bad. Don't be the one who sees the shame, be the one who corrects it. — Shams Tabrizi

MAULANA'S LAST LETTER TO SHAMS

Sometimes I wonder, sweetest love, if you
Were a mere dream in along winter night,
A dream of spring-days, and of golden light
Which sheds its rays upon a frozen heart;
A dream of wine that fills the drunken eye.

And so I wonder, sweetest love, if I
Should drink this ruby wine, or rather weep;
Each tear a bezel with your face engraved,
A rosary to memorize your name...

There are so many ways to call you back-
Yes, even if you only were a dream. — Jalaluddin Rumi

Love is the water of life. And a lover is a soul of fire! The universe turns differently when fire loves water. — Shams-i Tabrizi

His transcendent sense of worth had risen and caught up to him. He did not like the world he lived in, and the people in it. He was just as much a victim as he was a culprit of the seven deadly sins. — Soroosh Shahrivar

Love is a travel. All travelers whether they want or not are changed. No one can travel into love and remain the same. — Shams Tabrizi

If a person claims that he really loves someone, evidence is asked from him. And that evidence is the giving away of possessions, the granting of favors. Just as when Mevlana claimed that he loved me, when I came he granted me thousands of favors and protected me. I regard these all as a grace from God. — Shams Tabrizi

Dubai, with all of its glitz and glamour rose in the heart of the desert. — Soroosh Shahrivar

To get closer to Truth and Right, we need a beautiful and soft heart. Every human learns one day or another to become softer. Some accidentally, some because of disease, some suffer from human loss, some other from material loss ... We all face these situations, but we can either see the good in it and open our hearts, or unfortunately see an another occasion to lock it forever. — Shams Tabrizi

But the story didn't end there. Almost 800 years later, the spirits of Shams & Rumi are still alive today,whirling amid us somewhere ... — Elif Shafak

Mere flimflam stories, and nothing but shams and lies. — Miguel De Cervantes

Maulana Rumi was reading under the shade of a tree by a river, a pile of books besides him - according to one variation he was teaching a group of his students with a pile of hand-written notes next to him - when Shams Tabriz (rah) came by.

He asked Maulana what was going on and he replied 'This is qaal (words), something you cannot understand'.

Shams Tabriz then took Maulana's precious books and threw them in the water. Maulana was aghast. Shams Tabriz then recited Bismillah and pulled the books out of the water and dusted the water off them as if he was dusting sand; the pages thus dried and Maulana saw that the ink on them had not run despite having been soaked in water. Maulana was amazed and asked incredulously, what is this.

'This is haal (spiritual state) something you cannot understand' replied Shams Tabriz (rah). — Zulfiqar Ahmad

You who seek God, apart, apart The thing you seek, thou art, thou art. If you want to seek the Beloved's face. Polish the mirror, gaze into that space. These words were written by Rumi as a tribute for his master guru Shams of Tabriz. — Wayne W. Dyer

In endeavor itself there is a certain dynamic entertainment, affording an illusion of useful purpose. With achievement the illusion is dispelled. Man's greatest accomplishment is to produce change. The only good in life is study, because study is an endeavor that never reaches fulfillment. It busies a man to the end of his days, and it aims at the only true reality in all this world of shams and deceits. — Rafael Sabatini

That word, confidence, was like butter on a hot stove for Darien, what he considered the most attractive quality in a woman. — Soroosh Shahrivar

The summary of the advice of all prophets is this;
Find yourself a mirror. — Shams Tabrizi

I fear that many a man's good resolutions only need the ordinary fire of daily life to make them melt away. So, too, with fine professions and the boastings of perfection which abound in this age of shams. — Charles Spurgeon

If you look around, you can find a face of God in each thing, because He is not hidden in a church, in a mosque, or a synagogue, but everywhere. As there is no one who lives after seeing him, there is also no one dying after seeing him. Who finds Him, stays forever with him. — Shams Tabrizi

I was still more concerned (a preference which you may be far from resenting) to strike a blow for Epicurus, that great man whose holiness and divinity of nature were not shams, who alone had and imparted true insight into the good, and who brought deliverance to all that consorted with him. — Lucian Of Samosata

The words we use for the Creator are a reflect of ourselves. If we think of God as fear and shame, we are scared and have something to be ashamed of ... But if we see love, compassion and kindness, it is because we possess these qualities. — Shams Tabrizi

The no-booze rule is one of several shams perpetuated by certain religious groups, presumably to keep their flocks in line. After all, what's a shepherd to do with drunk sheep?
So take your medicine, but leave the booze on the shelf. We have a label to keep, and it's not Jack Daniels. Don't mourn for me. Just tell me what to do rather than teach me what to be. Slam another pill, pop that one last sedative ... you'll find me in the kitchen, washing my glass. — Chila Woychik

The universe is a complete unique entity. Everything and everyone is bound together with some invisible strings. Do not break anyone's heart; do not look down on weaker than you. One's sorrow at the other side of the world can make the entire world suffer; one's happiness can make the entire world smile. — Shams Tabrizi

Luck is the devil with a halo — Soroosh Shahrivar

Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. — Henry David Thoreau

Not long ago, man grew a sense of conscience. He defined himself by what he is, what he thinks, and, more importantly, what he feels - failing to realize that all come from One single source. All of man's qualities come from One divine being. And that One being has bestowed nature's hand with the ability to balance itself. Where there is good, there is also evil. And where evil arises, so does good — Soroosh Shahrivar

The whole universe is sum up in the Human Being. Devil is not a monster waiting to trap us, He is a voice inside. Look for Your Devil in Yourself, not in the Others. Don't forget that the one who knows his Devil, knows his God. — Shams Tabrizi

Instead of resisting to changes, surrender. Let life be with you, not against you. If you think 'My life will be upside down' don't worry. How do you know down is not better than upside? — Shams Tabrizi

When a sincere woman begins to dance, the seven heavens, the earth, and all creatures begin to dance. — Shams Tabrizi

He had never met a girl who shot an arrow straighter than Cupid did — Soroosh Shahrivar

The salat can be made up for, but there is no making up for false show or outward worship without presence. — Shams Tabrizi

Let it be ours to be self-reliant amidst hosts of the vacillating - real in a generation of triflers - true amongst a multitude of shams; when tempted to swerve from principle, sturdy as an oak in its maintenance; when solicited by the enticement of sinners, firm as a rock in our denial. — William Morley Punshon

Pilgrims from all over the world were making their way to the place deemed the pearl of the Middle East. The city was reminiscent of a modern-day Persepolis. Its buildings, like towering pillars, tested the sky's limit. The evenly paved roads belched with the smell of new tarmac, as if a million masons woke up every morning and by hand lay asphalt one grain at a time. People of all colors, ethnicities, creed and social statuses came bearing money, knowledge or experience in order to build their legacies in the new kingdom, sprouting out of the desert.
Dubai had arrived. — Soroosh Shahrivar