Sufism And Life Quotes & Sayings

There are two aspects of individual harmony: the harmony between body and soul, and the harmony between individuals. All the tragedy in the world, in the individual and in the multitude, comes from lack of harmony. And harmony is the best given by producing harmony in one's own life. — Hazrat Inayat Khan

What you are seeking in your retreat, I see clearly in every road and alleyway. — Idries Shah

Ali, Son of the Father of the Seeker
Ali said: 'None may arrive at the Truth until he is able to think that the Path itself may be wrong. This is because those who can only believe that it must be right are not believers, but people who are incapable of thinking otherwise than they already think. Such people are not men at all. Like animals they must follow certain beliefs, and during this time they cannot learn. Because they cannot be called "humanity", they cannot arrive at the Truth. — Idries Shah

I reject any path which rejects life, but I can't help loving Sufism because it sounds so beautiful. It gives relief in the midst of battle. — Naguib Mahfouz

Sufism, in one definition, "is" human life. — Idries Shah

They asked Abboud of Omdurman: 'Which is better, to be young or to be old?' He said: 'To be old is to have less time before you and more mistakes behind. I leave you to decide whether this is better than the reverse. — Idries Shah

Wisdom
Sufian said:
'The wisdom which is invisible but which sustains is a hundred times better than the appearance of wisdom, for that has itself to be sustained. — Idries Shah

Life: sometimes the man on the saddle, sometimes the saddle on the man. — Idries Shah

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

To understand the extreme lengths to which the Sufis were prepared to go in reading esoteric meanings into the quite simple language of their Scriptures, it is necessary to remember that the Koran was committed to memory by all deeply religious men and women, and recited constantly, aloud or in the heart; so that the mystic was in a state of uninterrupted meditation upon the Holy Book. Many passages which would otherwise pass without special notice were therefore bound to arrest their attention, already sufficiently alert, and to quicken their imagination, already fired by the discipline of their austerities and the rigor of their internal life. — A.J. Arberry

Many people who are in reality dead are walking in the streets; many who are in their graves are in reality alive. — Idries Shah

You have come a long way, and you do not know it. You have a long way to do, and you do know what that means. — Idries Shah

My life is on loan, like money borrowed from a bank. God is the lender, and He retains the right to call in the loan any time. Though I am responsible for taking care of it, I do not own this life; it is borrowed. Why should I fear its loss or the loss of anything else in this world when I must surrender it all anyway? — James Dillehay

But now she wasn't sure if she could concentrate on a subject as irrelevant to her life as Sufism and a time as distant as the thirteenth century. — Elif Shafak

Wisdom is when you understand what, previously, at best you only knew. — Idries Shah

Sufism is known by means of itself. — Idries Shah

The first lesson to learn is to resign oneself to the little difficulties in life, not to hit out at everything one comes up against. If one were able to manage this one would not need to cultivate great power; even one's presence would be healing. — Hazrat Inayat Khan

Saadi's dictum, in the Bostan: 'The Path is not in the rosary, the prayer-mat and the robe — Idries Shah

A Sufi is alive to the value of time, and is given, every moment, to what that moment demands. — Idries Shah

If you are 'humble', it may help you in ordinary life. If you are not, you will get nowhere in higher things. — Idries Shah

Treat this world as I do, like a wayfarer; like a horseman who stops in the shade of a tree for a time, and then moves on. — Idries Shah

Selfishness keeps man blind through life. — Hazrat Inayat Khan

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

The totality of life cannot be understood, so runs Sufi teaching, if it is studied only through the methods which we use in everyday living. — Idries Shah

It is no accident that Sufis find that they can connect most constructively with people who are well integrated into the world, as well as having higher aims, and that those who adopt a sensible attitude towards society and life as generally known can usually absorb Sufi teachings very well indeed — Idries Shah

Anybody or anything may stand between you and knowledge if you are unfit for it. — Idries Shah

Salute to the Thief. Junaid of Baghdad was passing the scene of a public hanging, where a thief was on the scaffold. Junaid bowed towards the criminal. Someone asked him: 'What did you do that?' Junaid said: 'I was bowing before his single-mindedness. For his aim, that man has given his life. — Idries Shah

Has it not occurred to you that, conversely, other people do not have your difficulties because they do not react as you do to what happens? — Idries Shah

I see You, Every time I look into Buddha's eyes. I give myself to You. Every time I alter one of Your 1,000s names. Honestly & fully I love You. Through Christ and Maria, Shiva and Shakti, Krishna and Radha, With every day that passes and every breath I take. I enter gratitude for receiving Your Love. Obeying Your Laws of Truthfulness and Ahimsa, Weaving Prana With hearts and souls of Gaia. Through mysticism, shamanism, sufism, and ecstatic meditations. I yearn to touch You, to feel You, to be You. Within this amazing Journey of Awareness of Your Consciousness. — Natasa Nuit Pantovic

Saying of the Mulla Nasrudin. If I survive this life without dying, I'll be surprised. — Idries Shah

They have fixed our nutrition and arranged our life-span. More than this, and ahead of this, efforts will not be productive. — Idries Shah

Sufism," according to the Sufi, "is an adventure in living, necessary adventure. — Idries Shah

Dramatic. A well developed sense of the dramatic has values beyond what people usually imagine. One of these is to realise the limitations of a sense of the dramatic. — Idries Shah

Sufism is experiential — Idries Shah

To be a Sufi is to detach from fixed ideas and from preconceptions; and not to try to avoid what is your lot. — Idries Shah

The lightning said to the oak tree: 'Stand aside, or take what is coming to you! — Idries Shah

Man (and woman) has an infinite capacity for self-development. Equally, he has an infinite capacity for self-destruction. A human being may be clinically alive and yet, despite all appearances, spiritually dead. — Idries Shah

Q: What is a fundamental mistake of man's?
A: To think that he is alive, when he has merely fallen asleep in life's waiting-room. — Idries Shah

However fast you run, or however skilfully, you can't run away from your own feet. — Idries Shah

Practise your knowledge, for knowledge without practice is a body without life — Idries Shah

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

Worry is a cloud which rains destruction. — Idries Shah