Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry Quotes

“The elixir of eternal life is love, since love is the key to youth. Describing his own spiritual state, Rumi comments:

I am not that kind of handsome youth
Who tomorrow grows old and frail.

Love not only preserves youth but turns the lover into a child, and for this reason, a certain childlike innocence and simplicity characterizes all of the great poets. In the words of Sa'di:

Whoever is close to you possesses all the fortune of youth
He will never turn old since he dwells in seventh heaven.

Exactly the same sentiment is expressed by Hafiz:

However old, heart-weary and incapable I become
The moment I recall your face I become young.

Or again:

The heart of one quickened in love will never die:
Our immortality is recorded in the tablet of the world.”
― Hossein Elahi Ghomshei PhD, Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry: From Attar to Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz

“Love is aroused in the Sufi poet when he beholds beauty. Although this vision raises his perception to a higher realm, he still cannot resist the call to descend again into the realm of mortal perception to incite others to return to the realm of love and experience his vision.”
― Hossein Elahi Ghomshei PhD, Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry: From Attar to Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz

“Although a difference does indeed exist between divine Revelation (wahy) and poetic inspiration (ilhām), this distinction is one of hierarchical degree, not of essential nature, for both prophetic revelation and poetic inspiration come from the same source.”
― Hossein Elahi Ghomshei PhD, Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry: From Attar to Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz

“Just as most Sufi poets professed to be possessed by the transcendental madness of Love, they also stressed the essentially 'selfless' nature of their poetry, claiming—albeit indirectly—the 'God-like' nature of their inspiration.”
― Hossein Elahi Ghomshei PhD, Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry: From Attar to Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz

“While the Mystic masters prided themselves on being 'lunatic', this was understood in two distinct senses: one, a lunacy below reason, and another, a lunacy above reason. The second type of lunacy, in the words of Shakespeare, is a 'fine frenzy', whereas the first type is the neurotic or psychotic insanity belonging to the field of abnormal psychology. Thus, where Rumi exclaims:

I am a lover, skilled in the arts of madness;
I am surfeited with culture and learning.”
― Hossein Elahi Ghomshei PhD, Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry: From Attar to Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz

“One sure sign of poetry inspired by love is that it is beloved by all, and in turn the only way to become 'beloved' is to be a lover, a lover of beauty.”
― Hossein Elahi Ghomshei PhD, Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry: From Attar to Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz

“The Persian mystic poet is often known as a mirror of the divine and a communer with the Muse who speaks of the mystery which is yonder. The poet is the tongue of the invisible realm' (lisan al-ghayb). Although this particular title has been officially given only to Hafiz by posterity, it is fair to state that all other mystic poets may equally claim it for their own. As Nizāmī in this context opines:

So perfect am I in the magic art of poetry
That I am called the 'Mirror of the Invisible'.”
― Hossein Elahi Ghomshei PhD, Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry: From Attar to Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz

“The main role of intoxication is to set the drinker free from the bonds of his selfhood—the 'ego' which is the source of all multiplicity, enmity and war—and ultimately, to lead him to the realm of Unity and peace with all.
Not only is the mystic poet a lover intoxicated with the wine of beauty, he is also a 'madman' outside the confines of convention and reason.”
― Hossein Elahi Ghomshei PhD, Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry: From Attar to Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz

“Shakespeare, in response to the accusation that his theme of love is boring and repetitious:

Why is my verse se so barren of new pride,
So far from variation or quick change?
Why with the time do I not glance aside
To new-found method and to compounds strange?

gives this rejoinder:

O know, sweet-love, I always write of you
And you and love are still my argument;
So all my best is dressing old words new,
Spending again what is already spent:
For as the sun is daily new and old,
So is my love still telling what is told.”
― Hossein Elahi Ghomshei PhD, Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry: From Attar to Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz

“beauty—the beloved—brings into existence myriads of lovers (nightingales); every moment she contemplates herself through the eyes of these lovers, hearing them sing her praises. Instant by instant, the one beauty assumes shape after shape, harkening to a perpetual chant of panegyric intoned upon a thousand tongues.”
― Hossein Elahi Ghomshei PhD, Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry: From Attar to Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz

“Unity's most salient attribute and manifestation is found in love.”
― Hossein Elahi Ghomshei PhD, Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry: From Attar to Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz

“Love is described by the Sufis as the remedy of all ills and the alchemy of existence. Love transforms poverty to riches, pauper into prince, war into peace, ignorance into knowledge and hell into heaven.”
― Hossein Elahi Ghomshei PhD, Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry: From Attar to Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz

“Artistic creation contains in miniature form the entire story of creation.”
― Hossein Elahi Ghomshei PhD, Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry: From Attar to Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz

“It should be pointed out that poetry, the inspiration for which hails from the higher world of love and unity, functions as a motive and cause of unity. The therapeutic value of poetry—as well as its metaphysical motivation and aesthetic significance in Sufism arises from this spiritual quality.”
― Hossein Elahi Ghomshei PhD, Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry: From Attar to Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz

“From ancient times Persian literature has featured many references to the "Religion of Love" (din-i 'ishq or madhhab-i ‘ishq), represented as being the only true faith, the creed most acceptable in the eyes of God.”
― Hossein Elahi Ghomshei PhD, Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry: From Attar to Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz

“Nizami, long before Newton, had posited that the entire scale of creation and nature was permeated by a reciprocally acting gravitational force that he named 'Love':

Attraction works on human temperament its lure
And that attraction sages predicate of love,
So when you ponder this in depth then you'll. perceive
That Eros holds the cosmos up: all stands through love,
And if once Eros lose its grip on Heaven's wheel
The great globe itself would forfeit its bloom and weal.”
― Hossein Elahi Ghomshei PhD, Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry: From Attar to Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz

“Become a lover; if you don't, one day the affairs of the world
Will come to an end, and you'll never have had even
One glimpse of the purpose of the workings of space and time.

_Hafiz”
― Hossein Elahi Ghomshei PhD, Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry: From Attar to Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz

“Nizāmī of Ganja (d. 598/1202), the leading author of epic romantic poetry in Persian literature, must be counted among the chief prophets of the Religion of Love in Persian belles lettres. In his romantic epic poem Khusraw and Shīrīn, Nīzamī teaches that the only role that man is fit to play in the entire theatre of Existence is that of the lover in the following verses, where Love is featured as a kind of Anima Mundi:

Naught else but love's my labour: that's my logo;
So long as I'm alive, don't offer me another motto.
All face towards love to supplicate in every
Temple under Heaven's eye. The galaxy
Itself wouldn't have an earth unless across
The surface Eros' water coursed to save its face. Become a slave to love! All righteous thought consists
Of this, for that's the task of the heart's adepts.
The cosmos is love in sum and all the rest deceit;
Save Amor's play, all else's an idle game and sport.”
― Hossein Elahi Ghomshei PhD, Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry: From Attar to Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz

“Persian Sufi poetry is inseparable from song and dance.”
― Hossein Elahi Ghomshei PhD, Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry: From Attar to Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz

“In his mystical epic "The Rhyming Spiritual Couplets" (Mathnawi-yi ma'nawi), Rumi frequently celebrates the Religion of Love. The following verse from his Mathnawi constitutes his most famous statement concerning the pre-eminence of this higher secta amoris:

  Love's state is apart
     From religions and faith
  God is the lover's creed—
     God is the lover's state.”
― Hossein Elahi Ghomshei PhD, Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry: From Attar to Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz

“Hafiz's "timeless drunken pleasure" is not of the unessential or accidental kind, but rather substantial, since the intoxication it bestows unlike the drink made from the vine or imbibed through the heady wine of ambition, pride and thoughtlessness—is not followed by any hangover or morning-after headache. Hence, it can never be nullified by repentance or by the recovery of sobriety. Those drunk on this wine never commit the sin of becoming teetotallers; as Sa'di says: "no man drunk on that wine served up at the dawn of pre-Eternity becomes sober until vespers are said on the night of the Day of Resurrection.”
― Hossein Elahi Ghomshei PhD, Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry: From Attar to Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz

“Since the reflection of the Beloved's beauteous countenance is everywhere cast down and reflected in the "goblets of phenomena" throughout the Tavern of the Universe, the lover is always intoxicated and bereft of self in a drunken transport. Loving that absolute intellectual Beauty, he attains the spiritual station of "true idolatry" (but- parastī-yi haqīqī), which is the inner meaning of Hafiz's verse:

   The Friend's reflection cast upon the goblet's surface
   —Her countenance there—in contemplation I've witnessed.
   Of such timeless drunken pleasure, you are, alas, oblivious.”
― Hossein Elahi Ghomshei PhD, Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry: From Attar to Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz

“To repent of love is sin and heresy.”
― Hossein Elahi Ghomshei PhD, Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry: From Attar to Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz

“The true believers within every religion, as Rumi puts it, are like rays of a single lamp:

   If ten lamps are together in one place
      each one is different from the next in form.
   You cannot tell apart the light of each
      when you are looking at them, there is no doubt.”
― Hossein Elahi Ghomshei PhD, Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry: From Attar to Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz

“It is wrong to assert we enter into the world devoid of all faith and belief and only subsequently personally select a religion for ourselves. On the contrary, each person is born with love for the good, beautiful and true innately instilled within him. If he doesn't deviate from the straight path of his original disposition, this primordial love will mature and develop within him and direct him along his course in life.”
― Hossein Elahi Ghomshei PhD, Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry: From Attar to Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz

“Insofar as the original disposition of man is one and the same, and all the prophets have been sent by the One God, it is unreasonable to assume that the religions of mankind should or can differ in their fundamental principles from each other. The mission of the prophets is thus precisely tailored to suit the original disposition of man, comprising a summons to contemplate the good, beautiful and true.”
― Hossein Elahi Ghomshei PhD, Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry: From Attar to Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz

“In the pursuit of goodness, knowledge and beauty, we receive such a sense of joy and experience so much rapture and delight that we even forget personal sorrow and grief.”
― Hossein Elahi Ghomshei PhD, Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry: From Attar to Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz

“Attar believed the only commendable and worthwhile connection between man and God to be a Lover Beloved relationship. Like many other Muslim mystics before him, Attar emphasized that the superiority and pre-eminence of Adam over the other angels lay in Adam's/ man's love-passion and agony. In fact, in Attarr's spiritual teachings, the cure for all psychological and spiritual ailments lies in the transformative suffering and passion of love (dard). That is why he asks for that passion to be increased:

   Give me an ounce of pain, O you
   Who cure all. pain, for left without
   Your pain, my soul will die.
   To heretics let heresy apply,
   And to the faithful—grant them faith;
   But for the heart of Attar, let
   One ounce of your pain remain.”
― Hossein Elahi Ghomshei PhD, Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry: From Attar to Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz

“Know it for certain that the lover's not a Muslim
For in the creed of love there's neither infidelity
Or faith; since once you fall in love, you have no body,
No soul, no heart, no mind: who ain't like this, ain't nothin.

_Rumi”
― Hossein Elahi Ghomshei PhD, Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry: From Attar to Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz

“No one is born a Muslim—much less a Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Jew, or Zoroastrian—but rather every person is moulded into becoming a 'believer' subject to the influence of their parents, wider society and cultural environment. At the same time, it should be emphasized that all these faiths, setting aside the excrescences, excesses and superfluities to which each has been heir, is quintessentially moulded according to that same God-given 'original disposition' within humankind. Thus, all the world's religions may be viewed as divergent manifestations of that one primordial faith of man, that is, the religion of his original disposition (fitra).”
― Hossein Elahi Ghomshei PhD, Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry: From Attar to Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz