All quotes

I want not to want, except what He wants.

— Bāyazīd al-Bisṭāmī

God is beautiful and He loves beauty.

— Muḥammad ﷺ

Knowledge of the Substance is the Substance of knowledge.

— Frithjof Schuon

There is nothing more timely than the Timeless.

— Seyyed Hossein Nasr

All that I have done I reckon but as dust. Whatever Thou hast seen of me not pleasing to Thy Presence, do Thou draw a line of pardon through it. And wash the dust of disobedience from me; for I hav…

— Bāyazīd al-Bisṭāmī

Every science is as noble as its subject, every knower is as noble as his knowledge; and there is nothing nobler than the Real and seeking It.

— Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh al-Iskandarī

Knowing, in its highest sense, is identity with the object of knowledge.

— Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Outwardly, creatures are an illusion; but, inwardly, they are an admonition. Thus, the soul looks at the illusory exterior, while the heart looks at the admonitory.

— Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh al-Iskandarī

Renunciation is to look at the world, keeping in mind that it is passing, in order that it be diminished in your eyes, thus making it easy for you to turn away from it.

— Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh al-Iskandarī

... always flee from sensuality, for it is the opposite of spirituality and opposites do not mix.

— Muḥammad al-ʿArabī al-Darqāwī

Live as long as you want, but you must die; love whatever you want, but you will become separated from it; and do what you want, but you will be repaid for it.

— al-Imām Muḥammad al-Ghazālī

Action without knowledge is vanity. Knowledge without action is insanity.

— al-Imām Muḥammad al-Ghazālī

... and above every lord of knowledge there is one who knows more.

— The Qur'an, Surah Yusuf, Ayah 76 (12:76)

Hast thou not seen how God sets forth a similitude? A good word is like a good tree, its roots firm in the ground and its branches reaching out into the sky.

— The Qur'an, Surah Ibrahîm , Ayah 24 (14:24)

To get what you love, you must first learn to be patient with what you hate.

— al-Imām Muḥammad al-Ghazālī

Your Lord has created you to only bow to the Truth all the days and nights of your life.

— Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn al-ʿArabī

In a general way the man of the "last days" is a blunted creature, and the best proof of this is that the only "dynamism" of which he is still capable is that which tends downward and which is no m…

— Frithjof Schuon

Intelligence is beautiful only when it does not destroy faith, and faith is beautiful only when it is not opposed to intelligence.

— Frithjof Schuon

...it is better to follow the truth stupidly than to follow error intelligently...

— Frithjof Schuon

No food is better than piety and there is nothing better than silence. No enemy is more powerful than ignorance. No illness is greater than lying.

— Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq

Expect death always and live accordingly.

— Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq

Love can sanctify the flesh, just as the flesh can debase love.

— Frithjof Schuon

Glory be to God who has not given to His creatures any way to attain knowledge of Him except by means of their helplessness and their hopelessness of ever reaching such attainment.

— Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq

The poor one is the one whose inside is always in struggle and whose external is always at peace.

— Bahāʾ al-Dīn Naqshband al-Bukhārī

And let your communication be: Yea, yeah Nay, nay; for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.

— Matthew, 5:37

The manifestation of Truth is a mystery of Love, just as, conversely, the content of Love is a mystery of Truth.

— Frithjof Schuon

An evil resort sought he that sought this world; a good state sought he that sought the world to come.

— Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī

The way of the seeker is hopelessness, the faith of the seeker in hopefulness. This life is full of triviality and it is completely devoid of essentiality. So look beyond this life, O being of prim…

— Poems of a servant. Jumada al ula, 1440

Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but one who has a hasty temper exalts folly. A tranquil mind gives life to the flesh, but passion makes the bones rot.

— Proverbs 14:29-30. Quoted from By Way of the Desert.

If you become angry when you are admonishing someone, you are satisfying your own passions. Do not lose yourself while attempting to save someone else.

— Macarius of Egypt. Quoted from By Way of the Desert

A hermit said, 'Satan has three powers that lead us into all sins: forgetfulness, negligence, selfish desire. If forgetfulness comes, the result is negligence, and negligence is the source of selfi…

— Quoted from By Way of the Desert

To identify oneself with Truth, to infuse It into our being and to transfer our being into It is to escape from the empire of error and sin.

— Frithjof Schuon

... Islam sets out to abolish both uncertainty and hesitation and, a fortiori, both error and sin.

— Frithjof Schuon

He whose soul melteth not away like snow in the hand of religion, in his hand religion like snow away doth melt.

— Sufi saying. Quoted from a Sufi Saint of the Twentieth Century by Dr. Martin Lings

Shaykh Ahmad al-ʿAlāwī ق: "Do you want to know what is lacking in you?" Marcel Carret: "Yes, what?" Shaykh Ahmad al-ʿAlāwī ق: "To be one of us and to see the Truth, you lack the desire to raise you…

— Aḥmad al-ʿAlawī

Truth is what separates knowledge from ignorance. Proof of it (the Truth) is what separates intellection from imitation.

— Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn al-ʿArabī

The fool's excuse is worse than his crime; the excuse of the ignorant is the poison that kills wisdom.

— Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī

Behold the state of him who hearkened to the words of his enemy, and the retribution of him who became the friend of the envious one... The state of a Pharaoh who hearkened to Haman, and the state …

— Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī

I stood with the pious but I did not progress with them. I stood with the warriors in the cause but I did not progress a single step with them. I stood with those who pray excessively and those who…

— Bāyazīd al-Bisṭāmī

God has granted His servants favours for the purpose of bringing them closer to Him. Instead, they are fascinated with the favours and are drifting further from Him.

— Bāyazīd al-Bisṭāmī

A man asked Bāyazīd, "Show me a deed by which I will approach my Lord". He said: "Love the Friends of God in order that they will love you. Love His saints until they love you. Because God looks at…

— Bāyazīd al-Bisṭāmī

O Lord, You have created this creation without its knowledge. You have placed on it a trust without its will. If You do not help it, who will?

— Bāyazīd al-Bisṭāmī

O God! It is not strange that I love You because I am a weak servant, but it is strange that You love me because you are the King of Kings.

— Bāyazīd al-Bisṭāmī

Tasawwuf is to give up rest and to accept suffering.

— Bāyazīd al-Bisṭāmī

He who does not have a shaykh, his shaykh is Satan.

— Bāyazīd al-Bisṭāmī

Hunger is a rain cloud: If a servant becomes hungry, God will shower his heart with wisdom.

— Bāyazīd al-Bisṭāmī

If God gave me permission for intercession, first I would intercede for those who harmed me and those who denied me.

— Bāyazīd al-Bisṭāmī

They said to him, "They key to Paradise is bearing witness that there is no god but God." He said, "It is true, but a key is to open a lock. The key of such witnessing can only operate with the fol…

— Bāyazīd al-Bisṭāmī

The ego or self always looks at the world, and the spirit always looks at the next life. Spiritual knowledge always looks at God, Almighty and Exalted. He whose self defeats him is from those who a…

— Bāyazīd al-Bisṭāmī

They asked him, "when does a man become a man?" He said: "When he knows the mistakes of his self and he busies himself in correcting them."

— Bāyazīd al-Bisṭāmī

Reflection is going from the false toward the Real, to behold within the part of the Absolute Whole.

— Maḥmūd Shabistarī

Abundance is seeking the beggars and the poor, just as beauty seeks a mirror. Beggars, then, are the mirrors of God's abundance, and they that are with God are united with Absolute Abundance.

— Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī

What is most characteristically human is not guaranteed to us by our species or by our culture but given only in potential. A spiritual master once expressed it in this way: A person must work to b…

— Kabir Helminski

God has made nonexistence appear solid and respectable; and He has made Existence appear in the guise of nonexistence. He has hidden the Sea and made the foam visible, He has concealed the Wind and…

— Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī

The possibility of negating the Truth in the human order is the origin of ugliness.

— Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Relieve yourself of self-contrivance, for you need not do what someone else is doing for you.

— Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh al-Iskandarī

A sign that you depend on action is that you lose hope when you sin.

— Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh al-Iskandarī

Your striving for what is assured to you, and your falling short in what is asked of you, are proof that the traces of insight have been wiped away from you.

— Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh al-Iskandarī

The heart enquired of the soul: what is the beginning of this business? What its end, and what its fruit? The soul answered: The beginning of it is the annihilation of the self. Its end, faithfulne…

— Khwājah ʿAbdullāh al-Anṣārī

What is not known is without end, while what is known is within limits.

— Mawlānā Shaykh Muḥammad Nāẓim ʿĀdil al-Ḥaqqānī

If fear of God is grounded in the heart, the tongue will never speak what is of no purpose.

— Mawlānā Shaykh Muḥammad Nāẓim ʿĀdil al-Ḥaqqānī

Our path is companionship, and good is in the collective.

— Bahāʾ al-Dīn Naqshband al-Bukhārī

Tasawwuf is the abandonment of anger.

— ʿAbd Allāh al-Fāʾiz al-Dāghistānī

... looking without wisdom is a capital offence.

— ʿAbd Allāh al-Fāʾiz al-Dāghistānī

The people asked her: 'When are servants of God contented?'. She replied: 'They are contented when they are as grateful for pain as they are for pleasure'.

— Rābiʿa al-ʿAdawiyya al-Qaysiyya

There are 3 big snakes that harm human beings: to be intolerant and impatient with the people around you; to be habituated to something you cannot leave; and to be controlled by your ego.

— Mawlānā Shaykh Muḥammad Nāẓim ʿĀdil al-Ḥaqqānī

To achieve honours in this world is humiliation. To achieve the next life is honour. I am amazed at those who prefer humiliation to honour.

— Mawlānā Shaykh Muḥammad Nāẓim ʿĀdil al-Ḥaqqānī

God said: Whoever will be patient with Us will reach Us.

— Mawlānā Shaykh Muḥammad Nāẓim ʿĀdil al-Ḥaqqānī

The lights of some people precede their dhikr, while the dhikr of some people precedes their lights. There is the one who does (loud) dhikr so that his heart be illumined; And there is the one whos…

— Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh al-Iskandarī

... we live in a world in which diplomacy often prevails over truthfulness, a world which while so sharply critical of everything opposed to it never turns the sharp edge of its supposedly hypercri…

— Seyyed Hossein Nasr

The great Sumnun, known as the 'the lover', went to Hijaz. The people of Fayd asked him: "Say some words for us." Sumnun went up on the pulpit but did not find anyone who was really able to truly h…

— Sumnūn al-Muḥibb

The calamity of knowledge is forgetfulness.

— ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib

The calamity of knowledge is forgetfulness.

— ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib

Beauty is inward virtue; virtue is inward beauty.

— Frithjof Schuon

What the virtues are to existential perfection, truths are to intellectual perfection...

— Frithjof Schuon

Spiritual realization is theoretically the easiest thing and in practice the most difficult thing there is. It is the easiest because it is enough to think of God. It is the most difficult because …

— Frithjof Schuon

To accept a trial is to thank God for it, with the understanding that it permits us a victory, a detachment with regard to the world and with regard to the ego.

— Frithjof Schuon

Every injustice that we suffer at the hands of men is at the same time a trial that comes to us from God.

— Frithjof Schuon

...we possess what we love to the extent that what we love is worthy of being loved.

— Frithjof Schuon

… who first is well-versed in tradition and knowledge and then becomes a Sufi has, indeed, achieved felicity, and he, who is a Sufi before being acquainted with tradition and knowledge has, indeed,…

— al-Imām Muḥammad al-Ghazālī

One's state is more important than one's statement.

— Mawlānā Shaykh Muḥammad Nāẓim ʿĀdil al-Ḥaqqānī

Whoever falls short of belief in something will not obtain it.

— Mawlānā Shaykh Muḥammad Nāẓim ʿĀdil al-Ḥaqqānī

Whoever uses their cerebral power when attending the presence of the noble shaykhs remains on earth. As for the one who uses his spirituality, he will fly with the shaykh in stations.

— Mawlānā Shaykh Muḥammad Nāẓim ʿĀdil al-Ḥaqqānī

He whose two days are identical has been defrauded.

— Muḥammad ﷺ

Surely, preserving a performed ibādah is more difficult than doing it.

— al-Imām Abū al-Layth al-Samarqandī

O God, whatsoever Thou hast apportioned to me of worldly things, do Thou give that to Thy enemies; and whatsoever Thou hast apportioned to me in the world to come, give that to Thy friends; for Tho…

— Rābiʿa al-ʿAdawiyya al-Qaysiyya

It is related that a Zoroastrian was told to convert to Islam. He said, “If Islam is what Bayazid ق does, I don’t have the strength for it and I can’t do it. If it’s what you do, I don’t have any n…

— Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār

الْعَجْزُ عَنْ دَرْكِ الْإِدْرَاكِ إِدْرَاكٌ

— Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq

If you deem a sin petty, you have deemed the Lord petty.

— Uways al-Qaranī

When asked, 'When does a person become truly humble?' he replied: 'When he sees no rank or spiritual state for himself, and when he does not see anyone among creation as more sinful than himself.'

— Bāyazīd al-Bisṭāmī

Returning a good deed for a good deed is trade. Returning a bad deed for a good deed is chivalry.

— Ahmad-e Yesevī