Aile > Aile's Quotes

“Everything takes time. Bees have to move very fast to stay still.”
― David Foster Wallace, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

“Thankfulness brings you to the place where the Beloved lives.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

“The poet lives and writes at the frontier between deep internal experience and the revelations of the outer world. There is no going back for the poet once this frontier has been reached; a new territory is visible and what has been said cannot be unsaid. The discipline of poetry is in overhearing yourself say difficult truths from which it is impossible to retreat. Poetry is a break for freedom. In a sense all poems are good; all poems are an emblem of courage and the attempt to say the unsayable; but only a few are able to speak to something universal yet personal and distinct at the same time; to create a door through which others can walk into what previously seemed unobtainable realms, in the passage of a few short lines.”
― David Whyte

“Art is the act of triggering deep memories of what it means to be fully human.”
― David Whyte

“I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.”
― Hafiz of Shiraz

“If you cannot find peace within yourself, you will never find it anywhere else.”
― Marvin Gaye

“Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.”
― Derek Walcott, Collected Poems, 1948-1984

“Then we had the irises, rising beautiful and cool on their tall stalks, like blown glass, like pastel water momentarily frozen in a splash, light blue, light mauve, and the darker ones, velvet and purple, black cat's ears in the sun, indigo shadow, and the bleeding hearts, so female in shape it was a surprise they'd not long since been rooted out. There is something subversive about this garden of Serena's, a sense of buried things bursting upwards, wordlessly, into the light, as if to point, to say: Whatever is silenced will clamor to be heard, though silently.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“In the bible it says you have to forgive seventy times seven. I want you all to know, I'm keeping a chart.”
― Hillary Rodham Clinton

“It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn't use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like "What about lunch?”
― A. A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

“One love, one heart, one destiny.”
― Robert Marley

“A BIRTHDAY

Something continues and I don't know what to call it
though the language is full of suggestions
in the way of language
but they are all anonymous
and it's almost your birthday music next to my bones

these nights we hear the horses running in the rain
it stops and the moon comes out and we are still here
the leaks in the roof go on dripping after the rain has passed
smell of ginger flowers slips through the dark house
down near the sea the slow heart of the beacon flashes

the long way to you is still tied to me but it brought me to you
I keep wanting to give you what is already yours
it is the morning of the mornings together
breath of summer oh my found one
the sleep in the same current and each waking to you

when I open my eyes you are what I wanted to see.”
― W.S. Merwin

“Separation

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.”
― W.S. Merwin

“with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is”
― W.S. Merwin

“You have taken root in the Beloved.
I love your golden branches

And the hundred graceful movements
Your body now makes each time
The wind, children and love come near.”
― شمس الدین محمد حافظ / Shams-al-Din Mohammad Hafez, The Subject Tonight Is Love: 60 Wild and Sweet Poems Inspired by Hafiz

“Your soul once sat on an easel on my knee.
For ages I hve been sketching you
With myriad shapes of sounds and light;

Now awake, dear pilgrim,
With your thousand swaying arms
That need to caress the sky.”
― شمس الدین محمد حافظ / Shams-al-Din Mohammad Hafez, The Subject Tonight Is Love: 60 Wild and Sweet Poems Inspired by Hafiz

“In many parts of this world water is
Scarce and precious.
People sometimes have to walk
A great distance
Then carry heavy jugs upon their
Heads.
Because of our wisdom, we will travel
Far for love.
All movement is a sign of
Thirst.
Most speaking really says
"I am hungry to know you."
Every desire of your body is holy;
Every desire of your body is
Holy.
Dear one,
Why wait until you are dying
To discover that divine
Truth?”
― شمس الدین محمد حافظ / Shams-al-Din Mohammad Hafez, The Subject Tonight Is Love: 60 Wild and Sweet Poems Inspired by Hafiz

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“She cast her fragrance and her radiance over me. I ought never to have run away from her... I ought to have guessed all the affection that lay behind her poor little stratagems. Flowers are so inconsistent! But I was too young to know how to love her...”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“Wrapped in the deep fragrance of the forest, I listen to the flapping of the birds' wings, to the stirring of the ferns. I'm freed from gravity and float up--just a little--from the ground and drift in the air. Of course I can't stay there forever. It's just a momentary sensation--open my eyes and it's gone. Still, it's an overwhelming experience. Being able to float in the air.”
― Haruki Murakami

“Look within,
There is no difference between yourself, Self and Guru.
You are always Free.
There is no teacher, there is no student, there is no teaching.”
― H.W.L. Poonja

“Let your will burn in this fire so that it takes you nowhere else. Let your self be burned in this fire of eternity, love and peace. Don't be afraid of this fire, it is love itself. This desire for freedom is the fire of love!”
― H.W.L. Poonja, The Truth Is

“Surrounded by nothingness you have to do nothing. You have to do nothing to be who you are. Nothing at all.”
― Sri H.W.L. Poonja, Wake Up and Roar: Satsang With H.W.L. Poonja, Vol. 1

“One is always free and one is always alone. The mind is only dreaming.”
― H.W.L. Poonja, Wake Up and Roar

“Nobody wants to work. Not even the breath wants to work.”
― H.W.L. Poonja, Wake Up and Roar

“Emptiness is emptiness. San Francisco or Delhi. Wherever you go, the emptiness surrounds you. Silence will follow you wherever you go.”
― H.W.L. Poonja, Wake Up and Roar

“No monastery has been successful at producing enlightenment. It has been tried; there are no shortcuts.”
― H.W.L. Poonja, Wake Up and Roar

“When we go from waking state to sleep, we lose everything that we held in the waking state. Relationships and possessions are lost to us in sleep. We have to let them go.”
― H.W.L. Poonja, Wake Up and Roar

“Look here and know who you are. Instantly you will find freedom, and this suffering--hitchhiking from womb to womb--will instantly stop. The only way is to look within.”
― Sri H.W.L. Poonja

“The whole world is your own Self. So who is good and who is bad?”
― H.W.L. Poonja, Wake Up and Roar