From classical works
Teachings from public-domain Sufi books
Short quotations only — copied from verified public-domain English translations, with book, translator, year, and a link you can open. We do not invent quotes or recycle popular internet “Rumi” lines unless they appear verbatim in a verified public-domain edition.
Foundations
“Knowledge of self is the key to the knowledge of God, according to the saying: ‘He who knows himself knows God,’ and, as it is written in the Koran, ‘We will show them Our signs in the world and in themselves, that the truth may be manifest to them.’”
— Al-Ghazālī, The Alchemy of Happiness, tr. Claud Field (London: John Murray, 1910), Chapter I · Wikisource · also sacred-texts.com/isl/tah/
“Sūfism is wholly self-discipline.”
— Quoted among classical definitions in Reynold A. Nicholson, The Mystics of Islam (London: G. Bell & Sons, 1914) · Project Gutenberg #67388
Character & adab
Adab on the path includes humility, honesty, respectful speech, and closing the eye to the faults of others while watching one’s own. Classical manuals treat manners as inseparable from knowledge.
“It is this: that God should make thee die to thyself and should make thee live in Him.”
— Definition of Sūfism collected in Nicholson, The Mystics of Islam (1914) · Project Gutenberg #67388
“Sūfism is, to possess nothing and to be possessed by nothing.”
— Nicholson, The Mystics of Islam (1914) · Project Gutenberg #67388
Teachers & guidance
Classical Sufi training often stresses companionship with a mature guide. Hujwīrī’s Kashf al-Mahjub (tr. Nicholson, 1911) describes how novices were trained in service and watchfulness of the heart before wearing the patched frock. This website is not a substitute for that living relationship — it is a reading companion.
“The penitent is a lover of God, and the lover of God is in contemplation of God: in contemplation it is wrong to remember sin, for recollection of sin is a veil between God and the contemplative.”
— Hujwīrī, as quoted by Nicholson in The Mystics of Islam (1914), citing Kashf al-Mahjub · full 1911 translation: Project Gutenberg #64786
These lines are offered for reflection, not as slogans. Read them beside the full chapter when you can. Nicholson’s 1914 overview and Field’s Ghazālī translation repay slow reading; Hujwīrī’s Kashf is denser and rewards a notebook.
Reading next
Explore the Library for starter public-domain volumes, or return to daily practice via Duas and Wazifas.