Faith and Fear make poor bedfellows. Where one is found, the other cannot exist.
The greatest conflicts are not between two people but between one person and himself.
Resolution is struggle. Resolution is ego. Resolution is saying, "I cannot live spontaneously. ".
Ourselves within us lethal forces nurse; We make of our own enemies our guests.
The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself
The horse thinks one thing and he that rides him another
It really is the relationship you have with your self that presents the key to the “kingdom”, so to speak... Fighting is good, but not when it is fighting yourself. Changing the world is good but first one has to start inside and concurrently make that place right. The strife and the ugliness in the world is the outward manifestation of this troubled relationship we have within on a whole.
Passion and strife bow down the mind.
Hope and despair ignore one another's cries.
If you want an enemy, the soul (nafs) is sufficient. If you want advice, death is sufficient.
There is not a moment when I do not feel the presence of a Witness whose eye misses nothing and with whom I strive to keep in tune.
Our wills and fates do so contrary run.
Conflict in free states is the law of life.
We are not at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we are not at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God.
Be always displeased at what thou art, if thou desirest to attain to what thou art not.
For every level there’s another Devil.
Ambition, and Covetousnesse are Passions that are perpetually incumbent, and pressing.
Feares are divided in the midst.
If our inward griefs were written on our brows, how many who are envied now would be pitied. It would seem that they had their deadliest foe in their own breast, and their whole happiness would be reduced to mere seeming.
Thy destiny is only that of man, but thy aspirations may be those of a god.
When you're writing you're constantly fighting demons to sit down and do what you do. If you listen to the voices outside your head, in addition to the ones inside your head, you'll never get anything done. There's enough inner strife.
Grief and disappointment give rise to anger, anger to envy, envy to malice, and malice to grief again, till the whole circle be completed.
No temple can still the personal griefs and strifes in the breasts of its visitors.
