"He discards a quilt for fear of bugs."

"Fettered feet in the presence of friends is better than living in a garden with strangers."

"WisdomSufian said: 'The wisdom which is invisible but which sustains is a hundred times better than the appearance of wisdom, for that has itself to be sustained."

"Good. Show me a man who thinks that he knows what 'good' is, and I will probably be able to show you a horror of a person. Show me a person who really knows what 'good' is, and I will show you that he almost never uses the word."

"The more wakeful a man is to the things which surround him, the more asleep is he, and his waking is worse than his sleep."

"BARQI: AESTHETICS IS ONLY THE LOWEST FORM OF PERCEPTION OF THE REAL."

"A Sufi is alive to the value of time, and is given, every moment, to what that moment demands."

"Nothing cheap without reason."

"Man thinks many things. He thinks he is One. He is usually several. Until he becomes One, he cannot have a fair idea of what he is at all."

"The Book of Wisdom. Simab said: 'I shall sell the Book of Wisdom for a hundred gold pieces, and some people will say that it is cheap.' Yunus Marmar said to him: 'And I shall give away the key to understanding it, and almost none shall take it, even free of charge."

"Life is a series of processes and struggles."

"It is no accident that Sufis find that they can connect most constructively with people who are well integrated into the world, as well as having higher aims, and that those who adopt a sensible attitude towards society and life as generally known can usually absorb Sufi teachings very well indeed."

"There is a succession of experiences which together constitute the educational and developmental ripening of the learner, according to the Sufis. People who think that each gain is the goal itself will freeze at any such stage, and cannot learn through successive and superseding lessons."

"Be a dog, but don't be a younger brother.Proverb."

"The heart of the wise person is a mirror to the world."

"Those who understand the problem are those who see it clearly."

"Humility cannot be taught by propaganda, though slavery can. Shouting for humility is a form of arrogance. One of my most abiding recollections is of a priest at a religious occasion once roaring, in the most threatening way imaginable: 'O our Lord God, we most humbly pray!'Real humility is not always the same as apparent humility. Remember that fighting against self-conceit is still fighting: and that it will tend to suppress it temporarily. It does not cure anything.Remember, too, that humility itself does not bring an automatic reward: it is a means to an end. It enables a person to operate in a certain manner."

"A real secret is something which only one person knows."

"Practise your knowledge, for knowledge without practice is a body without life."

"Q: What is a fundamental mistake of man's?A: To think that he is alive, when he has merely fallen asleep in life's waiting-room."

"You cannot change reality by ignoring it."

"The institution of teachership is there for this reason, that the learner must learn how to learn."

"You have come a long way, and you do not know it. You have a long way to do, and you do know what that means."

"Of whom can we think well when it is believed that if nothing bad is done to you, this has been a kindness?"

"The most important thing about the quest for knowledge is that it should never end."

"What is humanity? To feel pain at the sorrows of our neighbours, to feel humiliated at the humiliation of fellow-beings."

"One cannot learn from someone whom one distrusts."

"People change and needs change. So what was Sufism once is Sufism no more."

"Study institutions may become visible when the head is more emptied of imaginings."

"When we are talking about 'Christians' and 'Moslems' we must first make sure that we are talking about people who have an idea, which should be more or less correct, as to what the other is supposed to believe and what he is expected to do as a consequence of that belief."

"The impatient man is his own enemy, he slams the door on his own progress."

"The proverb says that 'The answer to a fool is silence'. Observation, however, indicates that almost any other answer will have the same effect in the long run."

"The fruit of timidity is neither gain nor loss."

"Helping othersI order you to assist any oppressed person, whether he is a Moslem or not."

"You are not responsible for the actions of others, only for your own."

"Before garden, vine or grape was in the world," writes one, "our soul was drunken with immortal wine."

"Your medicine is in you, and you do not observe it. Your ailment is from yourself, and you do not register it."

"If wine is the enemy of religion, I shall devour the enemy of religion."

"The clothes may vary, but the person is the same."

"Now that I have found thee, I know that in the first step I took, I moved away from thee."

"History is not usually what has happened. History is what some people have thought to be significant."

"Sufism, in one definition, "is" human life."

"They have fixed our nutrition and arranged our life-span. More than this, and ahead of this, efforts will not be productive."

"If you are not aware, you will not be aware of your lack of awareness."

"Worry is a cloud which rains destruction."

"To be obsessed by the idea of freedom, for instance, is itself a form of slavery. Such people are in the chains of the hope of freedom, and are therefore able to do little else than struggle with them."

"But the Sufis work IN the world, and therefore WITH 'things of the world'."

"The people of the world have a fixed destiny. But the spiritually developed receive what is "not in their destiny."

"We are not slaves to our circumstances; we are slaves to our minds."

"Question 3: Why should a person study Sufism?Answer: Because he was created to study it, it is his next step."