Attar of Nishapur Quotes

20 Sourced Quotes

Your face is neither infinite nor ephemeral.
You can never see your own face,
only a reflection, not the face itself.

Attar of Nishapur
This was no friendship, to forsake your friend, To promise your support and at the end Abandon him-this was sheer treachery. Friend follows friend to hell and blasphemy- When sorrow comes one's true friends are found; In times of joy ten thousand gather round.

Attar of Nishapur
When first you enter Wisdom's sea, beware-A wave of indecision floods you there.

Attar of Nishapur
The fruit of love's great tree is poverty; Whoever knows this knows humility.

Attar of Nishapur
Do all you can to become a bird of the Way to God;
Do all you can to develop your wings and your feathers.

Attar of Nishapur
Sin and Contrition — Retribution owed,
And cancell'd — Pilgrim, Pilgrimage, and Road,
Was but Myself toward Myself: and Your
Arrival but Myself at my own Door...

Attar of Nishapur
A thousand for his love expired each day, And those who saw his face, in blank dismay Would rave and grieve and mourn their lives away- To die for love of that bewitching sight Was worth a hundred lives without his light. None could survive his absence patiently, None could endure this king's proximity- How strange it was that man could neither brook The presence nor the absence of his look!

Attar of Nishapur
I shall grasp the soul's skirt with my hand
and stamp on the world's head with my foot.
I shall trample Matter and Space with my horse,
beyond all Being I shall utter a great shout,
and in that moment when I shall be alone with Him,
I shall whisper secrets to all mankind.
Since I have neither sign nor name
I shall speak only of things unnamed and without sign.

Attar of Nishapur
The home we seek is in eternity; The Truth we seek is like a shoreless sea, Of which your paradise is but a drop. This ocean can be yours; why should you stop Beguiled by dreams of evanescent dew? The secrets of the sun are yours, but you Content yourself with motes trapped in its beams. Turn to what truly lives, reject what seems — Which matters more, the body or the soul? Be whole: desire and journey to the Whole.

Attar of Nishapur
All you have been, and seen, and done, and thought,
Not You but I, have seen and been and wrought:
I was the Sin that from Myself rebell'd:
I the Remorse that tow'rd Myself compell'd...

Attar of Nishapur
A man whose eyes love opens risks his soul - His dancing breaks beyond the mind's control.

Attar of Nishapur
The Sea
Will be the Sea
Whatever the drop's philosophy.

Attar of Nishapur
Come you lost Atoms to your Centre draw,
And be the Eternal Mirror that you saw:
Rays that have wander'd into Darkness wide
Return and back into your Sun subside.

Attar of Nishapur
Yet what are seas and what is air? For all
Is God, and but a talisman are heaven and earth
To veil Divinity. For heaven and earth,
Did He not permeate them, were but names;
Know then, that both this visible world and that
Which unseen is, alike are God Himself,
Naught is, save God: and all that is, is God.

Attar of Nishapur
Joy! Joy! I triumph! Now no more I know
Myself as simply me. I burn with love
Unto myself, and bury me in love.
The centre is within me and its wonder
Lies as a circle everywhere about me.
Joy! Joy! No mortal thought can fathom me.

Attar of Nishapur
Thou all Creation art, all we behold, but Thou,
The soul within the body lies concealed,
And Thou dost hide Thyself within the soul,
O soul in soul! Myst'ry in myst'ry hid!
Before all wert Thou, and are more than all!

Attar of Nishapur
From each a mystic silence Love demands.
What do all seek so earnestly? 'Tis Love.
What do they whisper to each other? Love.
Love is the subject of their inmost thoughts.
In Love no longer "thou" and "I" exist,
For Self has passed away in the Beloved.

Attar of Nishapur
Don't be dead or asleep or awake.
Don't be anything.
What you most want,
what you travel around wishing to find,
lose yourself as lovers lose themselves,
and you'll be that.

Attar of Nishapur
He who would know the secret of both worlds,
Will find the secret of them both, is Love.

Attar of Nishapur
All things are but masks at God's beck and call,
They are symbols that instruct us that God is all.

Attar of Nishapur