"The Sufi saying has it: "God, to the bee, is something which has TWO stings!"

"If you are covetous, you are a prisoner: If you are greedy, you will never be filled."

"The Sufi teacher's mission is to be in the service of those who can learn."

"The task is to learn to live in peace with one's own nature."

"Better the demon which makes you improve than the angel who threatens."

"Wisdom is when you understand what, previously, at best you only knew."

"Never follow any impulse to teach, however strong it might be. The command to teach is not felt as an impulsion."

"People today are in danger of drowning in information; but, because they have been taught that information is useful, they are more willing to drown than they need be. If they could handle information, they would not have to drown at all."

"No practice exists in isolation."

"One day we will all wear a garment which has no pockets..."

"The function of a nutrient is to become transmuted, not to leave unaltered traces."

"Certain levels of human understanding cannot be attained, it is claimed, until the brain can work in more than one way."

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

"You will never reach Mecca, I fear: for you are on the road to Turkestan."

"How many friends would you have if you went from one to another asking them to conceal a dead body?"

"Virtually all organisations known to you work largely by means of your greed. They attract you because... they appeal to your greed."

"Whoever has not first dug a well, should not steal a minaret."

"Trying to force something is the best way to stop it from happening."

"The bird which has no knowledge of pure water, has his beak in salt water all year round."

"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."

"It was being written in the East that 'Sufism was formerly a reality without a name: now it is a name without a reality'."

"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."

"Take the wheat, not the measure in which it is contained."

"As Ibn Arabi says: 'Absolute existence is the source of all existence'."

"There is nothing wrong with a human being. There is something wrong with his ideas."

"Three things cannot be retrieved:The arrow once sped from the bowThe word spoken in hasteThe missed opportunity. Ali, the Lion of Islam."

"A MOTTO OF THE HUMAN RACE: Tell me what to do, but it must be what I want you to tell me."

"To be a Sufi is to detach from fixed ideas and from preconceptions, and not to try to avoid what is your lot."

"Whoever gives knowledge to a fool loses itAnd who keeps it from the deserving does wrong."

"No colour comes after black."

"A problem can be solved by changing your approach to it."

"Like calls to like, truth to truth and deceit to deceit."

"It is as true as anything else which can be spoken to say that all knowledge is really available everywhere."

"When Fortune knocks, open the door,' they say. But why should one make fortune knock, by keeping the door shut?"

"The Sufi is 'One who does not care when something is taken from him, but who does not cease to seek for what he has not."

"Proverbs and truisms are for this reason dangerous, because they produce blindness or non-thought."

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

"People in this civilization are starving in the middle of plenty. This is a civilization that is going down, not because it hasn't got the knowledge that would save it, but because nobody will use the knowledge."

"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."

"None should say: 'I can trust' or 'I cannot trust' until he is a master of the option, of trusting or not trusting."

"HE is a Master who may teach without it being totally labelled teaching, HE is a student who can learn without being obsessed by learning."

"Information about the activities of one body of Sufis may be harmful to the potential of another."

"Talent is the presence of ability and absence of understanding about the source and operation of knowledge."

"One can give or withhold in a manner far more effective, sophisticated, useful, which is quite invisible to people who think that giving or withholding is done by external assessment. If you seek some mark of favour or 'promotion', know that you are not ready for it. Progress comes through capacity to learn, and is irresistible. Nobody can stand between you and knowledge if you are fit for it."

"There can be no spirituality, according to the Sufi masters, without psychology, psychological insight and sociological balance."

"It is your duty to do your best. It is not, however, your birth-right to prevail."

"A book, for the Sufis, is an instrument as much as it is something to give information....The key is the teacher."

"Rumi himself once said that counterfeit gold is only to be found because there is such a thing as real gold to be copied."

"The Way of the Sufis cannot be understood by means of the intellect or by ordinary book learning."

"Sandals. The Sufi teacher Ghulam-Shah was asked what pattern he used in formulating his courses for disciples. He said: 'Barefoot until you can get sandals, sandals until you can manage boots."