Hazrat Inayat Khan Quotes - Page 7

The one Spirit of life is given different names, the sacred names. We more easily recognize the Spirit of life by the particular name to which we are accustomed. So far we are right, but the mistake we make, and it is to our loss, is to ignore or deny the same truth because it is given to us in another form and under another name. We limit it. We say the truth existed only in that period when certain teachers came to the world, and that after that it stopped.

By our trust in the divine beauty in every person we develop that beauty in ourselves.

The discrimination between good and evil is in man's soul. Every man can judge that for himself, because in every man is the sense of admiration of beauty. Happiness only lies in thinking or doing that which one considers beautiful. Such an act becomes a virtue or goodness.

The first lesson to learn is to resign oneself to the little difficulties in life, not to hit out at everything one comes up against. If one were able to manage this one would not need to cultivate great power; even one's presence would be healing.

If there is anything that gives kingliness to the soul, it is patience. What was the secret of the masters who have accomplished great things, who have inspired many and who have helped many souls? Their secret was patience.

Consciously or unconsciously, every being is capable of healing himself or others.

If people but knew their own religion, how tolerant they would become, and how free from any grudge against the religion of others.

Death is the tax the soul has to pay for having a name and a form.

People who have never had an ideal may hope to find one; they are in a better state than the people who allow the circumstances of life to break their ideal. To fall beneath one's ideal is to lose one's track in life; then confusion rises in the mind, and that light which one should hold high becomes covered and obscured, so that it cannot shine out to light one's path.

Sufism is not a religion or a philosophy, it is neither deism nor atheism, nor is it a moral, nor a special kind of mysticism, being free from the usual religious sectarianism. If ever it could be called a religion, it would only be as a religion of love, harmony, and beauty.

A person however learned and qualified in his life's work in whom gratitude is absent, is devoid of that beauty of character which makes personality fragrant.

The wise man should keep the balance between love and power; he should keep the love in his nature ever increasing and expanding, and at the same time strengthen the will so that the heart may not easily be broken.

The wonderful thing is that the soul already knows to some extent that there is something behind the veil, the veil of perplexity, that there is something to be sought for in the highest spheres of life, that there is some beauty to be seen, that there is Someone to be known who is knowable.

The body with its perfect mechanism loses power, magnetism, beauty, and brightness, when the soul departs from the body. This shows that the power, magnetism, beauty, and brightness belong to the soul.

Mankind is interdependent, and the happiness of each depends upon the happiness of all, and it is this lesson that humanity has to learn today as the first and the last lesson.

Music should be healing, music should uplift the soul, music should inspire; then there is no better way of getting closer to God, of rising higher towards the spirit, of attaining spiritual perfection, only if it is rightly understood.

A master sees the bad in the good, and the good in the bad.

The greatest is to have a tendency to friendship; this is expressed in the form of tolerance and forgiveness, in the form of service and trust. In whatever form he may express it this is the central theme: the constant desire to prove one's love for humanity, to be the friend of all.

For the value of everything exists for man only so long as he does not understand it. When he has fully understood, the value is lost, be it the lowest thing or the highest thing.

He who once burns his mouth on the hot soup, blows even the buttermilk.

In love abides all knowledge. It is mankind's love and interest in things that in time reveals their secret.

In this world of illusion, where at the end of the examination, we find everything to be of little importance, of little worth, if there is a sign of reality, of something one can depend upon, and in which one can recognize a sign of eternity, it is in the constancy of friendship.

The gardener uses both roses in the flowerbed and thorns in making fences.

When we are face to face with truth, the point of view of Krishna, Buddha, Christ, or any other Prophet, is the same. When we look at life from the top of the mountain, there is no limitation; there is the same immensity.

Very often in everyday life one sees that by losing one's temper with someone who has already lost his, one does not gain anything but only sets out upon the path of stupidity. He who has enough self-control to stand firm at the moment when the other person is in a temper, wins in the end. It is not he who has spoken a hundred words aloud who has won; it is he who has perhaps spoken only one word.