Ilwaad > Ilwaad's Quotes

“In relation to Monotheism considered as such, Judaism stabilized but “confiscated” the Message; Christianity universalized but “altered” it; Islam in turn restored it by stabilizing and universalizing it.”
― Frithjof Schuon

“Beauty attached to God is sacrament, cut off from God it becomes an idol.”
― Frithjof Schuon

“Relativism reduces every element of absoluteness to relativity while making a completely illogical exception in favor of this reduction itself. Fundamentally it consists in propounding the claim that there is no truth as if this were truth or in declaring it to be absolutely true that there is nothing but the relatively true; one might just as well say that there is no language or write that there is no writing. In short, every idea is reduced to a relativity of some sort, whether psychological, historical, or social; but the assertion nullifies itself by the fact that it too presents itself as a psychological, historical, or social relativity. The assertion nullifies itself if it is true and by nullifying itself logically proves thereby that it is false; its initial absurdity lies in the implicit claim to be unique in escaping, as if by enchantment, from a relativity that is declared to be the only possibility.”
― Frithjof Schuon, Logic and Transcendence

“The modern Westerner, persuaded that he has a right to "think for himself" and imagining that he exercises this right, is unwilling to acknowledge that his every thought has been shaped by cultural and historical influences and that his opinions fit, like pieces of jigsaw puzzle, into a pattern which has nothing random about it.”
― Gai Eaton, Islam and the Destiny of Man

“People are not always what they say there are - or even what they think they are. There is but One who sees us objectively, and heave reason to be thankful that He is called the Merciful, the Compassionate, the Forgiving”
― Gai Eaton, Islam and the Destiny of Man

“Those who know in their hearts that they are not really necessary -- and are entirely replaceable-- must inevitably be tempted to misrepresent the nature of their work and build up a false notion of its importance. A further alienation from truth takes place, a further loss of contact with reality. And one thing we can be sure of is that self-deception, whether on the level of the wind and the rain or on that of spiritual reality, must always come up against the real sooner or later, and that its destruction is very painful.”
― Charles Le Gai Eaton, King of the Castle: Choice and Responsibility in the Modern World

“The men of today boast of the ever growing extent of the modifications they impose on the world, and the consequence is that everything is thereby made more and more ‘artificial’…”
― René Guénon

“What men call chance is simply their ignorance of causes; if the statement that something had happened by chance were to mean that it had no cause, it would be a contradiction in terms.”
― René Guénon, The Crisis of the Modern World

“The “end of a world” never is and never can be anything but the end of an illusion.”
― René Guénon

“The falsification of everything has been shown to be one of the characteristic features of our period, but falsification is not in itself subversion properly so-called, though contributing directly to the preparation for it. Perhaps the clearest indication of this is what may be called the falsification of language, taking the form of the misuse of certain words that have been diverted from their true meaning; misuse of this kind is to some extent imposed by constant suggestion on the part of everyone who exercises any kind of influence over the mentality of the public.”
― René Guénon

“between the universe that can be apprehended by pure intellectual P.erception (the universe of the Cherubic Intelligences) and the universe perceptible to the senses, there is an intermediate world, the world of Idea-Images, of archetypal figures, of subtile substances, of "immaterial matter." This world is as real and objective, as consistent and subsistent as the intelligible and sensible worlds; it is an intermediate universe "where the spiritual takes body and the body becomes spiritual," a world consisting of real matter and real extension, though by comparison to sensible, corruptible matter these are subtile and immaterial. \The organ of this universe is the active Imagination; it is the place oftheophanic visions, the scene on which visionary events and symbolic histories appear in their true reality.\ Here we shall have a good deal to say of this universe, but the word imaginary will never be used, because with its present ambiguity this word, by prejudging the reality attained or to be attained, betrays an inability to deal with this at once intermediate and intermediary world.”
― Henry Corbin, Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn 'Arabi

“To be acquainted with what is best and oldest in yourself,
is to know yourself as you were, before the world was
made, before you emerged into time.”
― Henry Corbin, Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn 'Arabi

“I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of the peace.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope.”
― Benedictus de Spinoza

“Pride is pleasure arising from a man's thinking too highly of himself.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“No to laugh, not to lament, not to detest, but to understand.”
― Benedict de Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise

“Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love. Hatred which is completely vanquished by love, passes into love; and love is thereupon greater, than id hatred had not preceded it. ”
― Benedictus de Spinoza

“Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused”
― Baruch Spinoza

“We feel and experience ourselves to be eternal.”
― Baruch Spinoza, Ethics

“Minds, however, are conquered not by arms, but by love and nobility.”
― Baruch Spinoza, Ethics

“All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“Those who know the true use of money, and regulate the measure of wealth according to their needs, live contented with few things.”
― Spinoza

“Don’t cry and don’t rage. Understand.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived”
― Baruch Spinoza

“The good which every man, who follows after virtue, desires for himself he will also desire for other men...”
― Baruch Spinoza, Ethics

“Things are not more or less perfect, according as they delight or offend human senses, or according as they are serviceable or repugnant to mankind.”
― Baruch Spinoza, Ethics

“Such things as are good simply because they have been commanded or instituted, or as being symbols of something good, are mere shadows which cannot be reckoned among actions that are the offspring, as it were, or fruit of a sound mind and of intellect.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“Blessed are the weak who think they are good because they have no claws.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“Nothing in Nature is random. A thing appears random only through the incompleteness of our knowledge.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“The eyes are the mirror of the soul and reflect everything that seems to be hidden; and like a mirror, they also reflect the person looking into them.”
― Paulo Coelho, Manuscript Found in Accra