Sufi Path 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

Those who say 'I am ready to learn', or 'I am not ready to learn' are as often mistaken as they are correct in their surmise. — Idries Shah

The furnace of affliction produces refinement, in states as well as individuals. — John Adams

We are here in a wood of little beeches:
And the leaves are like black lace
Against a sky of nacre.
One bough of clear promise
Across the moon.
It is in this wise that God speaketh unto me.
He layeth hands of healing upon my flesh,
Stilling it in an eternal peace,
Until my soul reaches out myriad and infinite hands
Toward him,
And is eased of its hunger.
And I know that this passes:
This implacable fury and torment of men,
As a thing insensate and vain:
And the stillness hath said unto me,
Over the tumult of sounds and shaken flame,
Out of the terrible beauty of wrath,
I alone am eternal.
One bough of clear promise
Across the moon — Frederic Manning

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

I think that the first part of the art is making the art, but when art really becomes art is when it belongs to somebody else. — Pete Wentz

The pathways into Sufic thinking are, it is traditionally said, almost as varied as the number of Sufis in existence. — Idries Shah

I always have awkward relationships with the ladies for whatever reason. I don't know and so here we are. I was able to sort of take all of those terrible, terrible, terrible dates and turn them into a money making venture. — Jason Segel

If the path has been laid down, why the successive appearance of different teachers? Why would anyone reinvent the wheel, if everything were as cosy and sequential as primitive longing so easily convinces us? — Idries Shah

No age is compelled to take its beauty from preceding epochs. — Willis Polk

I wish I could emulate his spectacular lack of inspiration, and his peculiar lack of need for inspiration. — Andre Agassi

Yeah, this was pretty much one of those moments when she felt like strangling both of them. Did you guys trip over the dead horse? Please, stop beating it. — Cherrie Lynn

We are tomorrow's past. Even now we slip away like those pictures painted on the moving dials of antique clocks - a ship, a cottage, sun and moon, a nosegay. The dial turns, the ship rides up and sinks again, the yellow painted sun has set, and we, that were the new thing, gather magic as we go. The whirr of the spinning wheels has ceased in our parlours, and we hear no more the treadles of the loom, the swift, silken noise of the flung shuttle, the intermittent thud of the batten. But the imagination hears them, and theirs is the melody of romance." ~ from Mary Webb's introduction to her novel Precious Bane. — Mary Webb

On the Sufi path, first you discover the art of being alone amid the crowd. Next you discover the crowd within your solitude - the voices inside you. — Elif Shafak

So just to be truthful to my own sensibility, I need to acknowledge that the season is not all joy and light for a lot of people. It's tough - environmentally, emotionally, spiritually. — Sting

Sufis aim to refine human consciousness. This is Sufi mysticism: not mystification or magic, but a specific Path. — Idries Shah

The selection and following of a spiritual guide is the most important duty of a Sufi. — Idries Shah

I feel like I've been victimised. It's because of who I am. I've done my time for past mistakes, if it wasn't me there wouldn't be a reaction. — John Hopoate

You don't need miracles in the west. You have insurance. — Brother Yun

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