"You yourself are your own barrier " rise from within it."

"But the minimum human duty is to serve others: it is no great attainment."

"The Sufis regard systems which treat everyone alike as mechanical and degenerate."

"If you want special illumination, look upon the human face:See clearly within laughter the Essence of Ultimate Truth."

"Man (as he imagines himself to be), in general, is a possibility, not a fact."

"There is a Persian proverb: 'To test that which has been tested is ignorance.' To try to test something without the means of testing is even worse."

"Knowledge. How curious that a man who closes his hand upon air so often thinks that he has a ruby within his grasp."

"If I knew what two and two were " I would say Four!"

"Better to be safe than to be sorry' is a remark of value only when these are the actual alternatives."

"To say "yes" to the Sufi way is to say "no" to imagined escapes."

"The word 'choice' is a fraud while people choose only what they have been taught to choose."

"The Sufis,' runs the saying, 'understand with their hearts what the most learned scholars cannot understand with their minds."

"The candle burned the moth:But soon it will vanish in its own fat."

"The main problem is that most commentators are accustomed to thinking of spiritual schools as 'systems', which are more or less alike, and which depend upon dogma and ritual: and especially upon repetition and the application of continual and standardised pressures upon their followers.The Sufi way, except in degenerate forms which are not to be classified as Sufic, is entirely different from this."

"Enemies are often former or potential friends who have been denied - or think that they have been denied - something."

"Self-mortification, far from producing liberation from material things, is far more likely to cause either an unhinged mind, delusions or a masochistic taste for more suffering, experienced, of course, as joy."

"The Sufis have said: 'The importance of something is in inverse proportion to its attractiveness."

"If you really want to learn, do not be surprised if someone tries to teach you. And do not lightly reject the method."

"And there are many people, both Moslem and Christian, who have a good grasp of each others0 conceptions of surrender to God an other principles. But the widespread existence of bias, misinformation and lack of knowledge, militate against the effectiveness of dialogue, by the most subtle and one of the most effective of instruments, the subconscious, almost the subliminal, introduction of hostility."

"EPITAPH OF JALALUDIN RUMI. When we are dead, seek not our tomb in the earth, but find it in the hearts of men."

"There are as many paths to Truth as there are souls of men."

"Great men are great until they know it. Saints are holy until they know it."

"Eat what you desire, but dress like other people."

"Better to quarrel with a friend than to support enemies."

"He that is purified by love is pure, and he that is absorbed in the Beloved and hath abandoned all else is a Sufi.Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah."

"You say that this society will come to an end, because societies always have done so. I wonder whether they have ended because they were not really societies at all."

"Laziness is always your fault. It is the sign that a man has persevered in uselessness for too long."

"The significance of the dwelling is in the dweller."

"Counsels of BahaudinYou want to be filled. But something which is full has first to be emptied. Empty yourself so that you will fill properly, by observing these counsels, which you can do as duties to yourself:FirstNever follow any impulse to teach, however strong it might be. The command to teach is not felt as an impulsion."

"Words are only as powerful as the meaning they carry within them."

"The barren branches may appear inelegant: They are, to the cook, the means to make his fire."

"Water shrinks wool, urgency shrinks time.Shrinkage may be an advantage or the reverse, according to expectation."

"Remember the proverb: 'A sign is enough for the alert, but a thousand counsels are not enough for the negligent."

"A man is deficient in understanding until he perceives that there is a whole cycle of evolution possible within himself: repeating endlessly, offering opportunities for personal development."

"Humility is a teacher of itself. It is learnt by means of its practise."

"To comprehend the world around you, first, comprehend yourself."

"From the beginning, from the age of Adam to the time of kingship: from the powerful, pardon: from the poor, sins."

"Knowledge is a light that brightens the mind, not a burden."

"Forms have changed through the centuries in obedience to the external world to which all forms belong."

"Opportunity's precious, and time is a sword."

"Pick up a bee from kindness, and learn the limitations of kindness."

"The tongue is the best masseur of furrowed brows."

"Knowledge is something which you can use. Belief is something which uses you."

"Debating whether one trusts or not is a sign that one does not want to trust at all, and therefore is still incapable of it."

"Trust is needed before lessons can be learnt."

"Rumi speaks of people who rely upon the written word as sometimes being no more than donkeys laden with books."

"To understand, one must first question everything."

"When people have a hard task to do - one which stretches them - they become less concerned with trivial matters."

"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."

"When the human being says:'It is not true...'He may mean:'I don't know about it, so I think it is untrue.'Or:'I don't like it."