"And what though all the world should sink! Hafis! with thee, alone with thee Will I contend! joy, misery, The portion of us twain shall be; Like thee to love, like thee to drink,— This be my pride,—this, life to me!"

"Sir William Jones, A Grammar of the Persian Language (1771) · Poems, Consisting Chiefly of Translations from the Asiatick Languages (1772)"

"Herman Bicknell, Hafiz of Shiraz: Selections from his Poems, Translated from the Persian (1875)"

"Thy curl is ever drawing the heart silently Who hath power to speak (quarrel) with Thy heart-vanishing curl."

"Learn meekness from the shell in ocean’s bed And pearls on one who wounds thy head bestow."

"Opportunity flies, O brother, As the cloud that quick doth pass; Oh make use of it! life is precious If we let it go,—alas!"

"'Tis writ on Paradise's gate, "Woe to the dupe that yields to Fate!""

"It is a crime to seek to raise but self, Before all other men to praise but self, The pupil of the eye a lesson gives, Be all submitted to thy gaze but self."

"The dimple that thy chin contains has beauty in its round, That never has been fathomed yet by myriad thoughts profound."

"Slight me not zealot, go thou hence ashamed For naught is slight that has by God been framed."

"What holds in peace this two-fold world, let this two-fold sentence show Amity to every friend, courtesy to every foe."

"Heart, should the flood of death life’s fabric sweep away, Noah shall steer the ark o’er billows dark, despair not. Though perilous the stage, though out of sight the goal, Whithersoe’er we wend, there is an end, despair not. If love evades our grasp, and rivals press their suit, God, Lord of every change, surveys the range, despair not."

"What necessity for a sword to slay the lover, when a glance can deprive him of half his life!"

"Boy, let yon liquid ruby flow, And bid thy pensive heart be glad, Whate’er the frowning zealots say: Tell them, their Eden cannot show A stream so clear as Rocnabad, A bow’r so sweet as Mosellay."

"If it is thy desire that the Beloved should not break the covenant, Keep thy end of the thread that He may keep his end."

"Sweet are the garden, the rose, and wine, but they would not be sweet without the company of my darling."

"Come! hear of those who have felt sorrow’s touch Their words are few, but what they mean is much."

"Though many a rose in this garden is born No mortal who culls one escapes from the thorn."

"I have shut my eye like a falcon to all the world Since my (inward) eye is open to thy beauteous countenance."

"By contemplation I swear, By the beginning of speech, By the flight of a dove from the mind. A word is in the cage"

"The Persians regard Ferdowsi as the greatest of their poets. For nearly a thousand years they have continued to read and to listen to recitations from his masterwork, the Shah-nameh, in which the Persian national epic found its final and enduring form. Though written about 1,000 years ago, this work is as intelligible to the average, modern Iranian as the King James version of the Bible is to a modern English-speaker. The language, based as the poem is on a Dari original, is pure Persian with only the slightest admixture of Arabic."

"The Shāhnāmeh is the greatest epic in history. It is a treasure trove of ideas, wisdom, advice, help, guidance, and rites. With this immense work, Ferdowsi revived the spirit of serenity, magnanimity, and pride in the Iranian nation, which had lost itself under the weight of the Arab conquest of Iran. It empowered divided Iranian peoples to unite."

"For nearly a thousand years they have continued to read and to listen to recitations from his [Ferdowsi] masterwork [Shahnameh], the Shāh-nāmeh, in which the Persian national epic found its final and enduring form. Though written about 1,000 years ago, this work is as intelligible to the average, modern Iranian as the King James version of the Bible is to a modern English-speaker."

"I turn to right and left, in all the earth I see no signs of justice, sense or worth: A man does evil deeds, and all his days Are filled with luck and universal praise; Another's good in all he does—he dies A wretched, broken man whom all despise."

"O my son, thy lips still smell of milk, and thy heart should go out to pleasure. But the days are grave, and Iran looketh unto thee in its danger."

"توانا بود هر که دانا بود"

"Now there was fought a battle such as men have not seen the like. And the earth was covered with steel, and arrows fell from the clouds like hail, and the ground was torn with hoofs, and blood flowed like water upon the plains. And the dead lay around in masses, and the feet of the horses could not stir because of them."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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..."

"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."

"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."

"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..."

"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."

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

"It speaks to me in the silence of this one then through the words of that one speaking; it whispers to me through an eyebrow raised and the message of an eye winking."

"Expressions are many but Thy loveliness is one; Each of us refers to that single Beauty."

"The Beloved's Loveliness owns a hundred thousand faces; gaze upon a different fair one in every atom; for She needs must show to every separate thing a different aspect of Her beauty."

"By day I praised You but never knew it; by night slept with You without realising; fancying myself to be myself; but no, I was You and never knew it."

"Know yourself: a cloud drifting before your sun. Cut yourself off from your senses and behold your sun of intimacy."