Mary Alsaeid > Mary's Quotes

“Love Dogs

One night a man was crying,
Allah! Allah!
His lips grew sweet with the praising,
until a cynic said,
"So! I have heard you
calling out, but have you ever
gotten any response?"

The man had no answer to that.
He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.

He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls,
in a thick, green foliage.
"Why did you stop praising?"
"Because I've never heard anything back."
"This longing
you express is the return message."

The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.

Your pure sadness
that wants help
is the secret cup.

Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.
That whining is the connection.

There are love dogs
no one knows the names of.

Give your life
to be one of them.”
― Jalal Al-Din Rumi

“The caterpillar does all the work, but the butterfly gets all the publicity.”
― George Carlin

“Grief can be a burden, but also an anchor. You get used to the weight, how it holds you in place.”
― Sarah Dessen, The Truth About Forever

“Now, you might say: how can this be? I cannot feel his presence in any way. Listen to this. Sensing his presence is not in your power but in his. He will show himself when it suits him to do so, and he can also remain hidden if that is his wish. This is what Christ meant when he said to Nicodemus: ‘The spirit breathes where it will: you hear its voice but do not know where it comes from, or where it is going’ (John 3:8).”
― Meister Eckhart, Selected Writings

“There is no need to look for God here or there. He is no farther away than the door of your own heart.”
― Meister Eckhart

“Concerning sin and our proper attitude when we find ourselves in sin. Truly, to have committed a sin is not sinful if we regret what we have done. Indeed, not for anything in time or eternity should we want to commit a sin, neither of a mortal, venial or any other kind. Whoever knows the ways of God should always be mindful of the fact that God, who is faithful and loving, has led us from a sinful life into a godly one, thus making friends of us who were previously enemies, which is a greater achievement even than making a new earth. This is one of the chief reasons why we should be wholly established in God, and it is astonishing how much this inflames us with so great and so strong a love that we strip ourselves entirely of ourselves. Indeed, if you are rightly placed in the will of God, then you should not wish that the sin into which you fell had not happened. Of course, this is not the case because sin was something against God but, precisely because it was something against God, you were bound by it to greater love, you were humbled and brought low. And you should trust God that he would not have allowed it to happen unless he intended it to be for your profit. But when we raise ourselves out of sin and turn away from it, then God in his faithfulness acts as if we had never fallen into sin at all and he does not punish us for our sins for a single moment, even if they are as great as the sum of all the sins that have ever been committed. God will not make us suffer on their account, but he can enjoy with us all the intimacy that he ever had with a creature. If he finds that we are now ready, then he does not consider what we were before. God is a God of the present. He takes you and receives you as he finds you now, not as you have been, but as you are now. God willingly endures all the harm and shame which all our sins have ever inflicted upon him, as he has already done for many years, in order that we should come to a deep knowledge of his love and in order that our love and our gratitude should increase and our zeal grow more intense, which often happens when we have repented of our sins. Therefore God willingly tolerates the hurtfulness of sin and has often done so in the past, most frequently allowing it to come upon those whom he has chosen to raise up to greatness. Now listen! Was there ever anyone dearer to or more intimate with our Lord than the apostles? And yet not one of them escaped mortal sin. They all committed mortal sin. He showed this time and again in the Old and New Testament in those individuals who were to become the closest to him by far; and even today we rarely find that people achieve great things without first going astray. And thus our Lord intends to teach us of his great mercy, urging us to great and true humility and devotion. For, when repentance is renewed, then love too is renewed and grows strong.”
― Meister Eckhart, Selected Writings

“The midwife knows that when there is no pain, the way for the baby cannot be opened and the mother cannot give birth. Likewise, for a new Self to be born, hardship is necessary.”
― Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love

“Painfully delicate and surprisingly strong, silk resembles love. I told Shams how the silkworms destroy the silk they produce as they emerge from their cocoons. This is why the farmers have to make a choice between the silk and the silkworm. More often than not, they kill the silkworm while it is inside the cocoon in order to pull the silk out intact. It takes the lives of hundreds of silkworms to produce one silk scarf. … But eventually, for the silk to survive, the silkworm had to die.”
― Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love

“Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.”
― Khalil Gibran, Sand and Foam

“They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold; and I deem them mad because they think my days have a price.”
― Khalil Gibran, Sand and Foam

“My loneliness was born when men praised my talkative faults and blamed my silent virtues.”
― Khalil Gibran, Sand and Foam

“When you reach the end of what you should know, you will be at the beginning of what you should sense.”
― Kahlil Gibrán, Sand and Foam

“Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky.”
― Khalil Gibran, Sand and Foam

“Half of what I say is meaningless; but I say it so that the other half may reach you.”
― Khalil Gibran, Sand and Foam

“very few follow the path laid out for them—the path to their Personal Legends, and to happiness. Most people see the world as a threatening place, and, because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be a threatening place.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“A therapist once said to me, “If you face the choice between feeling guilt and resentment, choose the guilt every time.” It is wisdom I have passed on to many others since. If a refusal saddles you with guilt, while consent leaves resentment in its wake, opt for the guilt. Resentment is soul suicide. Negative thinking allows us to gaze unflinchingly on our own behalf at what does not work.

We have seen in study after study that compulsive positive thinkers are more likely to develop disease and less likely to survive. Genuine positive thinking — or, more deeply, positive being — empowers us to know that we have nothing to fear from truth. “Health is not just a matter of thinking happy thoughts,” writes the molecular researcher Candace Pert. “Sometimes the biggest impetus to healing can come from jump-starting the immune system with a burst of long-suppressed anger.” Anger, or the healthy experience of it, is one of the seven A’s of healing. Each of the seven A’s addresses one of the embedded visceral beliefs that predispose to illness and undermine healing.”
― Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress

“Successful people enjoy the journeys they embark on, irrespective of whether they reach their destination or not.”
― Zain Hashmi

“Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.”
― Brene Brown

“The dark does not destroy the light; it defines it. It's our fear of the dark that casts our joy into the shadows.”
― Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.”
― William Wordsworth

“I write because I must. It's not a choice or a pastime, it's an unyeilding calling and my passion.”
― Elizabeth Reyes

“Words are the bones. Writing is the lungs. Reading is like breathing.”
― T.L. Crain

“We should add that it is a privilege to be the recipient of a sulk: it means the other person respects and trusts us enough to think we should understand their unspoken hurt. It is one of the odder gifts of love.”
― Alain de Botton, The Course of Love

“At the heart of sulk lies a confusing mixture of intense anger and an equally intense desire not to communicate what one is angry about. The sulker both desperately needs the other person to understand and yet remains utterly committed to doing nothing to help them do so. The very need to explain forms the kernel of the insult: if the partner requires an explanation, he or she is clearly not worth of one. We should add that it is a privilege to be the recipient of a sulk: it means the other person respects and trusts us enough to think we should understand their unspoken hurt. It is one of the odder gifts of love.”
― Alain de Botton, The Course of Love

“...love is a skill, not just an enthusiasm.”
― Alain de Botton, The Course of Love

“We don't need to be constantly reasonable in order to have good relationships; all we need to have mastered is the occasional capacity to acknowledge with good grace that we may, in one or two areas, be somewhat insane.”
― Alain de Botton, The Course of Love

“Cynics are merely idealists with unusually high standards.”
― Alain de Botton, The Course of Love

“In an ideal world, marriage vows would be entirely rewritten. At the altar, a couple would speak thus: "We accept not to panic when, some years from now, what we are doing today will seem like the worst decision of our lives. Yet we promise not to look around, either, fro we accept that there cannot be better options out there. Everyone is always impossible. We are a demented species.”
― Alain de Botton, The Course of Love

“I have fallen into an abyss. I live in a world so curious, so strange. Of the dream that was my life, this is my nightmare.”
― Camille Claudel

“There is always something missing that torments me.”
― Camille Claudel