There is a Persian proverb: 'To test that which has been tested is ignorance.' To try to test something without the means of testing is even worse.

An egocentric pessimist is a person who thinks he hasn't changed, but that other people are behaving worse than before.

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

Banality is like boredom: bored people are boring people, people who think that things are banal are themselves banal. Interesting people can find something interesting in all things.

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

To be obsessed by the idea of freedom, for instance, is itself a form of slavery. Such people are in the chains of the hope of freedom, and are therefore able to do little else than struggle with them.

The Sufi way is through knowledge and practice, not through intellect and talk.