Do not become archivists of facts. Try to penetrate to the secret of their occurrence, persistently search for the laws which govern them.
Externally we are a single being, but internally we are a world.
I asked for strength, and God gave me difficulties to make me strong. I asked for wisdom, and God gave me problems to learn to solve. I asked for prosperity, and God gave me a brain and brawn to work. I asked for courage, and God gave me dangers to overcome. I asked for love, and God gave me people to help. I asked for favors, and God gave me opportunities. I received nothing I wanted. I received everything I needed.
Some people look for a beautiful place, others make a place beautiful.
Before making peace, war is necessary, and that war must be made with our self. Our worst enemy is our self: our faults, our weaknesses, our limitations. And our mind is such a traitor! What does it? It covers our faults even from our own eyes, and points out to us the reason for all our difficulties: others! So it constantly deludes us, keeping us unaware of the real enemy, and pushes us towards those others to fight them, showing them to us as our enemies.
Among all the valuable things of this world, the word is the most precious. For in the word one can find a light which gems and jewels do not possess; a word may contain so much life that it can heal the wounds of the heart. Therefore, poetry in which the soul is expressed is as living as a human being. The greatest reward that God bestows on man is eloquence and poetry. This is not an exaggeration, for it is the gift of the poet that culminates, in time, with the gift of prophecy.
In Sufi terms the crushing of the ego is called Nafs Kushi. And how do we crush it? We crush it by sometimes taking ourselves to task. When the self says, 'O no, I must not be treated like this,' then we say, 'What does it matter?' When the self says, 'He ought to have done this, she ought to have said that,' we say, 'What does it matter, either this way or that way? Every person is what he is; you cannot change him, but you can change yourself. ' That is the crushing. . . . It is only in this way that we can crush our ego.
Under no stretch of imagination can war be regarded as an ethical process; yet war, force, terror, and propaganda were the evolutionary means employed to weld the German people into a tribal whole.
Don't look where you fall, but where you slipped.
We develop our beautiful planet in such a way that we brush aside the species. . . we risk creating a wasteland, where our aspirations will ultimately wither and die
I seemed to hear God saying, "Put down your gun and we'll talk.