Exercise power by means of kindness, and you may be causing more damage than you could by cruelty. Neither approach is correct.

It is the message, not the man, which is important to the Sufis.

Please, not again what you studied, how long you spent at it, how many books you wrote, what people thought of you - but: what did you learn?

Better to be safe than to be sorry' is a remark of value only when these are the actual alternatives.

A motto of the human race: Let me do what I like, and give me approval as well.

If the path has been laid down, why the successive appearance of different teachers? Why would anyone reinvent the wheel, if everything were as cosy and sequential as primitive longing so easily convinces us?

Like the bat, the Sufi is asleep to 'things of the day' - the familiar struggle for existence which the ordinary man finds all-important - and vigilant while others are asleep. In other words, he keeps awake the spiritual attention dormant in others. That 'mankind sleeps in a nightmare of unfulfillment' is a commonplace of Sufi literature