Attar of Nishapur

"I shall grasp the soul's skirt with my hand and stamp on the world's head with my foot. I shall trample Matter and Space with my horse, beyond all Being I shall utter a great shout, and in that moment when I shall be alone with Him, I shall whisper secrets to all mankind. Since I have neither sign nor name I shall speak only of things unnamed and without sign."

"The Sea Will be the Sea Whatever the drop's philosophy."

"Your face is neither infinite nor ephemeral. You can never see your own face, only a reflection, not the face itself."

"Don't be dead or asleep or awake. Don't be anything. What you most want, what you travel around wishing to find, lose yourself as lovers lose themselves, and you'll be that."

"Joy! Joy! I triumph! Now no more I know Myself as simply me. I burn with love Unto myself, and bury me in love. The centre is within me and its wonder Lies as a circle everywhere about me. Joy! Joy! No mortal thought can fathom me."

"From each a mystic silence Love demands. What do all seek so earnestly? 'Tis Love. What do they whisper to each other? Love. Love is the subject of their inmost thoughts. In Love no longer "thou" and "I" exist, For Self has passed away in the Beloved."

"He who would know the secret of both worlds, Will find the secret of them both, is Love."

"Do all you can to become a bird of the Way to God; Do all you can to develop your wings and your feathers."

"Yet what are seas and what is air? For all Is God, and but a talisman are heaven and earth To veil Divinity. For heaven and earth, Did He not permeate them, were but names; Know then, that both this visible world and that Which unseen is, alike are God Himself, Naught is, save God: and all that is, is God."

"Thou all Creation art, all we behold, but Thou, The soul within the body lies concealed, And Thou dost hide Thyself within the soul, O soul in soul! Myst'ry in myst'ry hid! Before all wert Thou, and are more than all!"

"All things are but masks at God's beck and call, They are symbols that instruct us that God is all."

"All you have been, and seen, and done, and thought, Not You but I, have seen and been and wrought: I was the Sin that from Myself rebell'd: I the Remorse that tow'rd Myself compell'd..."

"Sin and Contrition — Retribution owed, And cancell'd — Pilgrim, Pilgrimage, and Road, Was but Myself toward Myself: and Your Arrival but Myself at my own Door..."

"Come you lost Atoms to your Centre draw, And be the Eternal Mirror that you saw: Rays that have wander'd into Darkness wide Return and back into your Sun subside."

"My friends, a shower of roses from that garden As my memoir upon your heads I've rained down. Since everyone has made some kind of contribution, Set forth another revelation and passed on, So I as well like all the rest have shown The sleepers how the bird of the soul has flown."

"Attar has roamed through the seven cities of love while we have barely turned down the first street."

"God is Eternal … Here in this garden of a lower Eden, Attar perfumed the soul of the humblest of men. This is the tomb of a man so eminent that the dust stirred by his feet would have served as collyrium to the eye of the firmament … and of whom the saints were disciples … In the year of the Hijra 586 he was pursued by the sword of the army which devoured everything, being martyred in the massacre which then took place … Increase, O Lord, his merit … May the glory be with Him who dies not and holds in his hands the keys to unlimited forgiveness and infinite punishment."