Sufi Love Quotes & Sayings

Then Gai told me about the famous cup of the heart, which I should now begin to empty. The Sufis compare our spiritual heart, the seat of God within us, with a cup into which the love of God flows. This cup, however, needs to be emptied before it can be filled with Divine love. This emptying is a long process that requires courage, strength of character, determination, and, above all, sincerity. It is a process of reining in and eventually extinguishing the ego, of letting go of material needs, bad and unhealthy habits and emotional attachments in order to make room for God. Sufis often likened it to the process of dying and being born again. 'Die before you die' is a famous Sufi saying. This was the essence of every spiritual path, Gai told me. — Kristiane Backer

We seek the fire of the spark that is already within us. — Kamand Kojouri

I know you're tired but come, this is the way. — Jalaluddin Rumi

Farsi Couplet:
Naala-e zanjeer-e Majnun arghanoon-e aashiqanast
Zauq-e aan andaza-e gosh-e ulul-albaab neest


English Translation:
The creaking of the chain of Majnun is the orchestra of the lovers,
To appreciate its music is quite beyond the ears of the wise. — Amir Khusrau

I was you
and never knew it. — Rumi

You dance inside my chest, where no one sees you, — Rumi

The thing we tell of can never be found be seeking, yet only seekers find it. — Bayazid Bastami

In love, there is no distinction between success and failure. If love remains then even separation is union otherwise even union is separation. — Wasif Ali Wasif

No one is born beneath this dance. This dance gives birth to you. — Holly Lynn Payne

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

116. "I have heard that on the day the world was born,
the bird of love was released to fly.
It searched all the three worlds
but could not find a fit resting place.
So it turned and entered the inmost heart,
favoured it and never flew elsewhere.
The three worlds asked it then,
'Why are you attached to the human heart?'
'Suffering," it replied, "is the only hope for humans.
Where there is sorrow, there I dwell.'
Where there is grief in the world, love has its dwelling. — Mir Sayyid Manjhan Shattari Rajgiri

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

A Sufi has a right to be served, but he has no right to demand. Maruf Karkhi of Khorasan — Idries Shah

Do not think that your magic ring will work if you are not yourself Solomon. — Idries Shah

Love is an involuntary gift that manifests unplanned. — Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi

Even the Quran, which Sufis respect as the direct speech of God, lacks the capacity to shed light upon God's essence. As one Sufi master has argued, why spend time reading a love letter (by which he means the Quran) in the presence of the Beloved who wrote it? — Reza Aslan

One who has no beloved in the country can never love the country. — Wasif Ali Wasif

Scholars of the East and West have heroically consecrated their whole working lives to making available, by means of their own disciplines, Sufi literary and philosophical material to the world at large. In many cases they have faithfully recorded the Sufis' own reiteration that the Way of the Sufis cannot be understood by means of the intellect or by ordinary book learning. — Idries Shah

It's about a love song to myself, and a love song to the universe, kind of like the way that Song of Solomon consists of love songs to God or like the way Sufi poems are erotic love songs to God, I kind of wanted something like that. Because I was getting to know myself more deeply at this point. I've always been on this track where I wanted to be enlightened. — Larkin Grimm

There came one and knocked at the door of the Beloved.
And a voice answered and said, 'Who is there?'
The lover replied, 'It is I.'
'Go hence,' returned the voice;
'there is no room within for thee and me.'
Then came the lover a second time and knocked and again the voice demanded,
'Who is there?'
He answered, 'It is thou.'
'Enter,' said the voice, 'for I am within. — Rumi

He had found riches beyond worldly imagination. He had found the never ending well of love. — Soroosh Shahrivar

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

He who is fortunately enlightened [the Sufi]
Knows that sophistry is from the devil and love from Adam. — Idries Shah

Similitude of the heart is like that of a telephone operator between man and God. — Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi

Khusrau darya prem ka, ulti wa ki dhaar,
Jo utra so doob gaya, jo dooba so paar.

English Translation.

Oh Khusrau, the river of love
Runs in strange directions.
One who jumps into it drowns,
And one who drowns, gets across. — Amir Khusrau

In your beauty, how to make poems. — Rumi

The Sufi saint Rabi'a Al-Adawiyya was seen carrying a firebrand and a jug of water - the firebrand to burn Paradise, the jug of water to drown Hell ...
So that both veils disappear, and God's followers worship, not out of hope for reward, nor fear of punishment, but out of love. — Craig Thompson

I searched for my Beloved in the strangest of places, until the day I realized I couldn't take my eyes off Her. — Eric Micha'el Leventhal

Do we find ourself or does our self get demolished? — Donna Goddard

Farsi Couplet:
Mun tu shudam tu mun shudi,mun tun shudam tu jaan shudi
Taakas na guyad baad azeen, mun deegaram tu deegari


English Translation:
I have become you, and you me,
I am the body, you soul;
So that no one can say hereafter,
That you are someone, and me someone else. — Amir Khusrau

He that is purified by love is pure; and he that is absorbed in the Beloved and hath abandoned all else is a Sufi.
Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah. — Idries Shah