Reza Honarvar > Reza's Quotes

“The esoteric finds the Absolute within the traditions, as poets find poetry within the poems.”
― Frithjof Schuon, The Transcendent Unity of Religions

“To fear death, gentlemen, is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know. No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew that it is the greatest of evils.”
― Socrates

“چو ايران نباشد تن من مباد
بدين بوم و بر زنده يک تن مباد
بيا تا همه تن به کشتن دهيم
مبادا که کشور به دشمن دهيم
دريغ است ايران که ويران شود
کنام پلنگان و شيران شود”
― ابوالقاسم فردوسی

“To perceive is to suffer.”
― Aristotle

“Sir Isaac Newton was asked how he discovered the law of gravity. He replied, "By thinking about it all the time.”
― Sir Isaac Newton

“Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.”
― Albert Einstein

“The Islamic intellectual tradition has usually not seen a dichotomy between intellect and intuition but has created a hierarchy of knowledge and methods of attaining knowledge according to which degrees of both intellection and intuition become harmonized in an order encompassing all the means available to man to know, from sensual knowledge an reason to intellection and inner version or the "knowledge of the heart.”
― Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Islamic Philosophy from its Origin to the Present: Philosophy in the Land of Prophecy

“The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther

“Sometimes I don't understand how another can love her, is allowed to love her, since I love her so completely myself, so intensely, so fully, grasp nothing, know nothing, have nothing but her!”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther

“Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”
― Cicero

“We live in an age of confusion and thirst in which the advantages of communication are greater than those of secrecy.”
― Frithjof Schuon , Esoterism As Principle and As Way

“If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they know nothing, and as men filled, not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellows.”
― Plato, Phaedrus

“Mathematics is the queen of disciplines.... it will drive the nonsense out of your head!”
― Leo Tolstoy

“Hope is a waking dream.”
― Aristotle

“خداشناسی و خودشناسی از هم جدا نیستند؛ زیرا کسی که هستیِ مجازی خود را بشناسد، هستیِ حقیقی خدا را شناخته است.”
― سید محمدحسین طباطبائی, شیعه در اسلام

“O Thou whose Name is sweetest remedy
And whose remembrance heals our soul’s disease
With Thee each moment is Eternity
A drop from Heaven that consoles and frees.”
― Frithjof Schuon

“Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.”
― Rumi

“Even as the Sun doth not wait for prayers and incantations to
rise, but shines forth and is welcomed by all: so thou also wait
not for clapping of hands and shouts and praise to do thy duty;
nay, do good of thine own accord, and thou wilt be loved like the
Sun.”
― Epictetus, The Golden Sayings of Epictetus

“No man is free who is not master of himself.”
― Epictetus

“To accuse others for one's own misfortune is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete.”
― Epictetus

“Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.”
― Max Planck, Where Is Science Going?

“If Mohammed had been a false prophet. there is no reason why Christ should not have spoken of him as he spoke of Antichrist but if Mohammed is a true Prophet the passages referring to the Paraclete must inevitably concern him - not exclusively but eminently - for it is inconceivable that Christ, when speaking of the future, should have passed over in silence a manifestation of such magnitude. The same reasoning excludes a priori the possibility that Christ. when making his predictions, intended to include Mohammed under the general denomination of'' false prophets", for in the history of our era Mohammed is in no sense a typical example among others of the same kind, but on the contrary, a unique and incomparable apparition(1). If he had been one of the false prophets announced by Christ he would have been followed by others and there would exist in our day a multitude of false religions subsequent to Christ and comparable in importance and extension to Islam. The spirituality to be found within Islam from its origins up to our days is an incontestable fact. and "by their fruits ye shall know them." Moreover, it will be recalled that the Prophet in his doctrine has testified to the second coming of Christ without attributing to himself any glory. unless it be that of being the last Prophet of the cycle and history proves that he spoke the truth, no comparable manifestation having followed after him.”
― Frithjof Schuon, The Transcendent Unity of Religions