“What strange beings we are! That sitting in hell at the bottom of the dark, we're afraid of our own immortality.”
“When someone beats a rug, the blows are not against the rug, but against the dust in it.”
“If you want money more than anything, you'll be bought and sold. If you have a greed for food, you'll be a loaf of bread. This is a subtle truth: Whatever you love, you are.”
“You can accomplish a hundred other things but if you do not accomplish the one thing for which you have been sent, it will be as if you have done nothing.”
“The waterwheel accepts water and turns and gives it away, weeping.”
“Regard a king as someone unconcerned with kingship.”
“They say there is a doorway from heart to heart, but what is the use of a door when there are no walls?”
“Truth lifts the heart, like water refreshes thirst.”
“He is like a man using a candle to look for the sun”
“Learn to speak by listening.”
“Gamble everything for love, if you're a true human being.”
“Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free.”
“Through love scraps of copper are turned to gold.”
“I'm in love! Your advice, what are they? Love has poisoned me! Your remedies, what are they? I hear them shout: "fast, Bind him feet!" But if my heart that has gone mad! Those strings on my feet What is the point?”
“I will find new meaning in every joy and sorrow.”
“In love’s country, language doesn’t have its place. Love is mute.”
“We alchemists look for talent that can heat up and change. Lukewarm won't do. Halfhearted holding back, well-enough getting by? Not here.”
“I don’t regret how much I love, and I avoid those who repent their passion.”
“Hungry, you're a dog, angry and bad-natured. having eaten your fill, you become a carcass; you lie down like a wall, senseless. At one time a dog, at another time a carcass, how will you run with lions, or follow the saints?”
“Show me anger and I will show you 'Hurt'. Show me hurt and I will show you 'Love'. Peel the layers if you care!”
“Doing as others told me, I was Blind. Coming when others called me, I was Lost. Then I left everyone, myself as well. Then I found Everyone, Myself as well.”
“Walk out like someone suddenly born into colour. Do it now.”
“Some nights stay up till dawn, as the moon sometimes does for the sun. Be a full bucket pulled up the dark way of a well, then lifted out into light.”
“Many have been led astray by the Qur'an: by clinging to that rope many have fallen into the well. There is no fault in the rope, O perverse man, for it was you who had no desire to reach the top.”
“A circle of lovely, quiet people becomes the ring on my finger.”
