Famous Quotes & Sayings

Rumi

You rave about the Holy Place (Masjid al-Haram) and say you've visited God's garden but where is your bunch of flowers? There is some merit in the suffering you have endured but what a pity you have not discovered the Makkah thats inside

Rumi

This world is full of remedies. But you have no remedy until God opens a window for you. You may not be aware of that remedy just now. In the hour of need it will be made clear to you. The Prophet said God made a remedy for every pain.

Rumi

Your heart mirrors not His love, Rusty with your sins it is, Remove this rust and you shall Perceive how Glorious He is.

Rumi

For those who realize that everything is from God, everything is the same.

Rumi

Weep like the waterwheel, that green herbs may spring up from the courtyard of your soul. If you wish for tears, have mercy on one who sheds tears; if you wish mercy, show mercy to the weak.

Rumi

All creatures, day and night, make manifestation of Allah. Some of them know what they are doing and are aware of their manifesting, while others are unaware. However it may be, Allah's manifestation is confirmed.

Rumi

Whoever is sitting with friends is in the midst of a flower garden, though he may be in the fire. Whoever sits with an enemy is in the fire, even though he is in the midst of a garden.

Rumi

When you resolve to become pious, the devil in your nature cries out at you, "Tread not those paths, O confused one; distress and poverty will overcome you. You will be despised, let down by friends, you will regret it." Dread of the devil has bound their souls; the cries of the devil are the drover of the damned; the call of the Lord is a guardian of the saints.

Rumi

Till man destroys "self" he is no true friend of God.

Rumi

I was once like you, enlightened and "rational", I too scoffed at lovers, Now I am drunk, crazed, thin with misery. No one is safe! Watch out.

Rumi

Poverty is not for the sake of hardship. No, it is there because nothing exists but Allah. Poverty unlocks the door - what a blessed key!

Rumi

Intelligence is the shadow of objective truth. How can the shadow vie with sunshine?

Rumi

I have been so naughted in Thy Love's existence that my nonexistence is a thousand times sweeter than my existence

Rumi

I am a bird of God's garden and I do not belong to this dusty world For a day or two they have put me here in this cage of my own body I did not come here of my own I will not return of my own to my own country.

Rumi

Close both eyes to see with the other eye.

Rumi

Doubt is a precipice on the way to God. Blessed is he who is freed from its bonds. He who fares without any doubt, adhere to his footprints if you do not know the way. Cleave to the footprints of the deer and advance with care that you may reach the musk-gland. By means of such trekking, even if you walk on fire, you will reach the luminous peak.

Rumi

Eventhough you are not equipped, keep searching: equipment isn't necessary on the way to the Lord. Whoever you see engaged in search, become her friend and cast your head in front of her, for choosing to be a neighbour of seekers, you become one yourself; protected by conquerors, you will yourself learn to conquer. If an ant seeks the rank of Solomon, don't smile contemptuously upon its quest. And of all your skills, and wealth and handicraft, Weren't they first merely a thought and a quest?

Rumi

Never be without remembrance of Him, for His remembrance gives strength and wings to the bird of the Spirit.

Rumi

Sometimes in order to help He makes us cry Happy the eye that sheds tears for His sake Fortunate the heart that burns for His sake Laughter always follow tears Blessed are those who understand Life blossoms wherever water flows Where tears are shed divine mercy is shown

Rumi

He is like a man using a candle to look for the sun

Rumi

How should Spring bring forth a garden on hard stone? Become earth, that you may grow flowers of many colors. For you have been heart-breaking rock. Once, for the sake of experiment, be earth!

Tom Peters

The day firing becomes easy is the day to fire yourself.

Stephen Crane

Philosophy should always know that indifference is a militant thing. It batters down the walls of cities and murders the women and children amid the flames and the purloining of altar vessels. When it goes away it leaves smoking ruins, where lie citizens bayonetted through the throat. It is not a children's pastime like mere highway robbery.

Thomas Merton

The secret of my full identity is hidden in Him. He alone can make me who I am, or rather who I will be when at last I fully begin to be. But unless I desire this identity and work to find it with Him and in Him, the work will never be done

Thomas Merton

Once you have grace," I said to him, "you are free. Without it, you cannot help doing the things you know you should not do, and that you know you don't really want to do. But once you have grace, you are free. When you are baptized, there is no power in existence that can force you to commit a sin-nothing that will be able to drive you to it against your own conscience. And if you merely will it, you will be free forever, because the strength will be given you, as much as you need, and as often as you ask, and as soon as you ask, and generally long before you ask for it, too.

Thomas Merton

Because You have called me here not to wear a label by which I can recognize myself and place myself in some kind of a category. You do not want me to be thinking about what I am, but about what You are. Or rather, You do not even want me to be thinking about anything much: for You would raise me above the level of thought. And if I am always trying to figure out what I am and where I am and why I am, how will that work be done?

Thomas Merton

I seek to speak to you, in some way, as your own self. Who can tell what this may meanI myself do not know, but if you listen, things will be said that are perhaps not written in this book. And this will be due not to me but to the One who lives and speaks in both.

Thomas Merton

In any case, his religious teaching consisted mostly in more or less vague ethical remarks, an obscure mixture of ideals of English gentlemanliness and his favorite notions of personal hygiene. Everybody knew that his class was liable to degenerate into a demonstration of some practical points about rowing, with Buggy sitting on the table and showing us how to pull an oar.

Thomas Merton

I had refused to pay any attention to the moral laws upon which all our vitality and sanity depend: and so now I was reduced to the condition of a silly old woman, worrying about a lot of imaginary rules of health, standards of food-value, and a thousand minute details of conduct that were in themselves completely ridiculous and stupid, and yet which haunted me with vague and terrific sanctions. If I eat this, I may go out of my mind. If I do not eat that, I may die in the night.

Thomas Merton

The most awful tyranny is that of the proximate Utopia where the last sins are currently being eliminated and where, tomorrow, there will be no more sins because all the sinners will have been wiped out.

Thomas Merton

You have got me walking up and down all day under those trees, saying to me over and over again, "Solitude, solitude." And You have turned around and thrown the world in my lap. You have told me, "Leave all things and follow me," and then You have tied half of New York to my foot like a ball and chain. You have got me kneeling behind that pillar with my mind making a noise like a bank. Is that contemplation?

Thomas Merton

Show us your Christ, Lady, after this our exile, yes: but show Him to us also now, show Him to us here, while we are still wanderers.

Thomas Merton

And of course most non-Catholics imagine that the Church is immensely rich, and that all Catholic institutions make money hand over fist, and that all the money is stored away somewhere to buy gold and silver dishes for the Pope and cigars for the College of Cardinals.