Great Throughts Treasury

"Reason is like an officer when the King appears; the officer then loses his power and hides himself. Reason is the shadow cast by God; God is the sun. "

"The lovers of God have no religion but God alone. "

"The Beloved is in all; the lover merely veils Him; the Beloved is all that lives, the lover a dead thing. "

"The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love. "

"There’s no one more openly irreverent than a lover. He or she jumps up on the scale opposite eternity and claims to balance it. And no one more secretly reverent."

"Whispers of the Beloved - I cannot sleep in your prescence. In your absence, tears prevent me. You watch me My Beloved On each sleepless night and Only You see the difference Looking at my life I see that only Love Has been my soul’s companion From deep inside My soul cries out: Do not wait, surrender For the sake of Love. If you can’t smell the fragrance Don’t come into the garden of Love. If you’re unwilling to undress Don’t enter into the stream of Truth. Stay where you are. Don’t come our way. All year round the lover is mad, Unkempt, lovesick and in disgrace. Without love there is nothing but grief. In love;¦ what else matters? Love is our Mother and The way of our Prophet. Yet it is in our nature To fight with Love. We can’t see you, mother, Hidden behind dark veils Woven by ourselves. Do you want to enter paradise? To walk the path of Truth You need the grace of God. We all face death in the end. But on the way, be careful Never to hurt a human heart! Do you know what the music is saying? Come follow me and you will find the way. Your mistakes can also lead you to the Truth. When you ask, the answer will be given. The Master who’s full of sweetness Is so drunk with love, he’s oblivious. Will you give me some of your sweetness? I have none, he says, unaware of his richness. You know what love is? It is all kindness, generosity. Disharmony prevails when You confuse lust with love, while The distance between the two Is endless. This Love is a King But his banner is hidden. The Koran speaks the Truth But its miracle is concealed. Love has pierced with its arrow The heart of every lover. Blood flows but the wound is invisible."

"A craftsman pulled a reed from the reed-bed, cut holes in it, and called it a human being. Since then, it's been wailing a tender agony of parting, never mentioning the skill that gave it life as a flute"

"A generous friend gives life for a friend let's rise above this animalistic behavior and be kind to one another."

"A great God-wrestling does on inside these wanderers."

"A great, unseen town lies just behind that curtain. Don't lower yourself. Don't knock on every door. You yourself are what you are looking for. Raise your tent up to the sky. Don't say, I can't. Sure you can. Just do it."

"A lover asked his beloved, ‘Do you love yourself more than you love me?’ The beloved replied, ‘I have died to myself and I live for you. I've disappeared from myself and my attributes. I am present only for you. I have forgotten all my learnings, but from knowing you I have become a scholar. I have lost all my strength, but from your power I am able. If I love myself I love you. If I love you I love myself.’"

"A lifetime without Love is of no account Love is the Water of Life Drink it down with heart and soul!"

"A moment of happiness, you and I sitting on the verandah, apparently two, but one in soul, you and I. We feel the flowing water of life here, you and I, with the garden's beauty and the birds singing. The stars will be watching us, and we will show them what it is to be a thin crescent moon. You and I unselfed, will be together, indifferent to idle speculation, you and I. The parrots of heaven will be cracking sugar as we laugh together, you and I. In one form upon this earth, and in another form in a timeless sweet land."

"A servant wants to be rewarded for what he does. A lover wants only to be in love's presence, that ocean whose depth will never be known."

"A secret freedom opens through a crevice you can barely see."

"A Thirsty Fish - I don't get tired of you. Don't grow weary of being compassionate toward me. All this thirst equipment must surely be tired of me, the water-jar, the water carrier. I have a thirsty fish in me that can never find enough of what it's thirsty for. Show me the way to the ocean. Break these half-measures, these small containers. All this fantasy and grief. Let my house be drowned in the wave that rose last night in the courtyard hidden in the center of my chest. Joseph fell like the moon into my we'll. The harvest I expected was washed away. But no matter. A fire has risen above my tombstone hat. I don't want learning, or dignity, or respectability. I want this music and this dawn and the warmth of your cheek against mine. The grief armies assemble, but I'm not going with them. This is how it always is when I finish a poem. A great silence comes over me, and I wonder why I ever thought to use language."

"A mountain keeps an echo deep inside. That’s how I hold your voice."

"A strange passion is moving in my head my heart has become a bird which searches in the sky. Every part of me goes in different directions. Is it really so that the one I love is Everywhere?"

"All day and night, music, a quiet, bright reed song. If it fades, we fade."

"A thousand half-loves must be forsaken to take one whole heart home."

"All people on the planet are children, except for a very few. No one is grown up except those free of desire."

"All because of love when it arrived my temporal life from then on changed to eternal."

"All religions, all this singing, one song. The differences are just illusion and vanity. The sun's light looks a little different on this wall than it does on that wall, and a lot different on this other one, but it's still one light."

"All the barriers within yourself."

"Although I may try to describe Love when I experience it I am speechless. Although I may try to write about Love I am rendered helpless; my pen breaks and the paper slips away at the ineffable place where Lover, Loving and Loved are one. Every moment is made glorious by the light of Love."

"And don't think the garden loses its ecstasy in winter. It's quiet, but the roots are down there riotous."

"Although you see the pit, you cannot avoid it."

"And even if this world burns up hidden harps will still play here."

"And if you are a rose, I am rose-shadow."

"And patience flees my heart, and reason flees my mind. Oh, how drunk can I get to be, without your love's security?"

"And watch two men washing clothes, one makes dry clothes wet. The other makes wet clothes dry. they seem to be thwarting each other, but their work is a perfect harmony. Every holy person seems to have a different doctrine and practice, but there's really only one work."

"And still, after all this time, the Sun has never said to the Earth, ‘You owe me.’ Look what happens with love like that. It lights up the sky."

"Any soul that drank the nectar of your passion was lifted. From that water of life he is in a state of elation. Death came, smelled me, and sensed your fragrance instead. From then on, death lost all hope of me."

"And you? When will you begin that long journey into yourself?"

"Any lifetime that is spent without seeing the master Is either death in disguise or a deep sleep. The water that pollutes you is poison; The poison that purifies you is water."

"Any wine will get you high. Judge like a king, and choose the purest, the ones unadulterated with fear, or some urgency about what's needed."

"Atom, you want to flee the sun? Madman, give up! You're a jar; fate's a stone- kick against it, and you’ll waste your wine."

"As you live deeper in the heart, the mirror gets clearer and cleaner."

"Appear as you are, Be as you appear."

"Anyone who knows me, should learn to know me again; For I am like the Moon, you will see me with new face every day."

"Are you fleeing from love because of a single humiliation? What do you know of love except the name? Love has a hundred forms of pride and disdain, and is gained by a hundred means of persuasion. Since love is loyal, it purchases one who is loyal: it has no interest in a disloyal companion."

"As for us, He has appointed the job of permanent unemployment. If he wanted us to work, after all, He would not have created this wine. With a skin-full of this, Sir, would you rush out to commit economics?"

"As you start to walk out on the way, the way appears."

"At every instant and from every side, resounds the call of Love: We are going to sky, who wants to come with us? We have gone to Heaven, we have been the friends of the angels, And now we will go back there, for there is our country."

"At the end of my life, with just one breath left, if you come, I’ll sit up and sing."

"At night, I open the window and ask the moon to come and press its face against mine. Breathe into me. Close the language-door and open the love-window. The moon won't use the door, only the window."

"Be helpless, dumbfounded, unable to say yes or no. Then a stretcher will come from grace to gather us up. We are too dull-eyed to see that beauty. If we say we can, we’re lying. If we say No, we don’t see it, That No will behead us and shut tight our window onto spirit. So let us rather not be sure of anything, Beside ourselves, and only that, so Miraculous beings come running to help. Crazed, lying in a zero circle, mute, we shall be saying finally, with tremendous eloquence, Lead us. When we have totally surrendered to that beauty, we shall be a mighty kindness."

"Be certain that in the religion of Love there are no believers and unbelievers. Love embraces all."

"Be a lamp, a lifeboat, a ladder. Help someone's soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd."

"Be a helpful friend, and you will become a green tree with always new fruit, always deeper journeys into love."