In the Arab world, there is no link between the cultural habits of peoples and the ways of thinking and creating of modern intellectuals. They are two separate worlds.
Anger destroys the beauty of the heart as well as the beauty of the face.
A path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you. Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself alone, one question. Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesnt it is of no use.
One of the tragedies of modern times is that people have come to believe that something said by someone in the past, perhaps for illustrative or provocation purposes, actually represents that person's beliefs at the time.
If you know a little of yourself, you will have realised that you are more than meets your eyes in the mirror in the morning. What you see is not what you are. You see the form not the content, the body not the soul, the matter not the mind. In quiet and profound moments, we innately know that is true. But we forget. The world tells us and wants us to believe that we are what we see - and we take the easy way out. We believe. That's why the awakening of spirit and the flowering of our spirituality (nothing to do with religion) means we have to keep reminding ourselves, a hundred times a day, I am a soul - not a body, I am an eternal spirit - not a perishable piece of meat. I am quality, not quantity. I am. Otherwise, freedom is not possible. And if we are not free, in the deepest space inside our own being, we cannot be truly happy.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over.
You study, you learn, but you guard the original naivety. It has to be within you, as desire for drink is within the drunkard or love is within the lover.
As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent." "By all means marry. If you get a good wife you will become happy, and if you get a bad one you will become a philosopher.
Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.
Are you ready to cut off your head and place your foot on it? If so, come; Love awaits you! Love is not grown in a garden, nor sold in the marketplace; whether you are a king or a servant, the price is your head, and nothing less. Yes, the cost of the elixir of love is your head! Do you hesitate? 0 miser, It is cheap at that price!
Heaven means to be one with God.
I was a queen, and you took away my crown; a wife, and you killed my husband; a mother, and you deprived me of my children. My blood alone remains: take it, but do not make me suffer long.
Only the brave know how to forgive... a coward never forgave; it is not in his nature.
Zen says that if you drop knowledge - and within knowledge everything is included; your name, your identity, everything, because this has been given to you by others - if you drop all that has been given by others, you will have a totally different quality to your being: innocence. This will be a crucifixion of the persona, the personality, and there will be a resurrection of your innocence. You will become a child again, reborn.
The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.
