"When you are still fragmentated, lacking certainty - what difference does it make what your decisions are?"

"Many people who are in reality dead are walking in the streets, many who are in their graves are in reality alive."

"The means through which people may perceive Truth have forms, Truth has no form."

"Truth has no form."

"Do not tell your secrets to everyone in this headquarters, Earth. We have surveyed it well. There was nobody to whom to entrust secrets."

"Hariri says, in his Maqamat: 'Safety is on the river's BANK."

"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."

"The happiness of the superficial: when a man who has lost his donkey finds it again."

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

"People think that they think things, and they also think that they know things. They could usefully give some attention to the question of whether they know what they think and know what they think they know."

"The Path is not to be found anywhere except in human service."

"Correct teaching brings out human excellence."

"Religion, for instance, cannot be accepted or rejected out of hand, until the student knows exactly what religion means."

"The laziness of adolescence is a rehearsal for the incapacity of old age."

"The liar has a bad memory."

"The teaching must, of course, work with the best part of the individual, must be directed to his or her real capacity."

"Hazrat Ali, in a saying attributed to him, says: 'Man is in disguise, covered by his tongue'."

"The sufis believe that they can experience something more complete."

"When you get a principle on which everyone is agreed, you get the beginning of complacency and deterioration."

"Deep in the sea are riches beyond compare. But if you seek safety, it is on the shore."

"If you do not understand, you cannot love. You can only imagine that you love."

"If a pot can multiply. One day Nasrudin lent his cooking pots to a neighbour, who was giving a feast. The neighbour returned them, together with one extra one " a very tiny pot. 'What is this?' asked Nasrudin. 'According to law, I have given you the offspring of your property which was born when the pots were in my care,' said the joker. Shortly afterwards Nasrudin borrowed his neighbour's pots, but did not return them. The man came round to get them back. 'Alas!' said Nasrudin, 'they are dead. We have established, have we not, that pots are mortal?'."

"TeachingOne hour's teaching is better than a whole night of prayer."

"Things which are seemingly opposed may in fact be working together."

"What is hidden is often more important than what is seen."

"The most difficult things to grasp are the simplest."

"Why do people always wonder whether books are any good, without wondering whether they are themselves in a state to profit from them?"

"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."

"The self is the only thing you can ever truly know."

"The would-be Sufi needs guidance precisely because books, texts, while telling you what is needed, do not tell you when."

"Well-meant techniques such as arbitrary self-mortification, are useless."

"Superior experience and knowledge will be made available to a man or woman in exact accordance with his worth, capacity and earning of it."

"Everyone does not know the secrets of TruthThe States of Truth are not evidential."

"Everything depends on the right perspective."

"The journey is the destination."

"Hit your hand on a stone and expect it to hurt."

"If... says: 'Do not be greedy, be generous', you may inwardly interpret this in such a manner that you will develop a greed for generosity."

"The Sufi must be able to alternate his thought between the relative and the Absolute, the approximate and the Real."

"But the world itself, as well as special attitudes, properly understood, constitute the Sufi school."

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

"Do not try to be humble: learn humility."

"Knowledge gives nothing to a man until he gives everything to it."

"A man must be a Solomon before his magical ring will work."

"If you seek small things to do, and do them well, great things will seek you, and demand to be performed."

"It is not only a matter of not caring who knows - it is also a matter of knowing who cares."

"Each flies with its own kind: pigeon with pigeon, hawk with hawk."

"Knowledge cannot be attained except through humility."

"The teacher works in accordance with the prospects of his students and the possibility of maintaining the community of Sufis."

"The process of learning is the process of discovering what really exists."

"You must not confuse the opportunity to be wise with the opportunity to be clever."