Hafiz Quotes Quotes

“The Persian mystic poet is often known as a mirror of the divine and a communer with the Muse who speaks of the mystery which is yonder. The poet is the tongue of the invisible realm' (lisan al-ghayb). Although this particular title has been officially given only to Hafiz by posterity, it is fair to state that all other mystic poets may equally claim it for their own. As Nizāmī in this context opines:

So perfect am I in the magic art of poetry
That I am called the 'Mirror of the Invisible'.”
― Hossein Elahi Ghomshei PhD, Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry: From Attar to Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz

“Become a lover; if you don't, one day the affairs of the world
Will come to an end, and you'll never have had even
One glimpse of the purpose of the workings of space and time.

_Hafiz”
― Hossein Elahi Ghomshei PhD, Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry: From Attar to Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz

“Hafiz's "timeless drunken pleasure" is not of the unessential or accidental kind, but rather substantial, since the intoxication it bestows unlike the drink made from the vine or imbibed through the heady wine of ambition, pride and thoughtlessness—is not followed by any hangover or morning-after headache. Hence, it can never be nullified by repentance or by the recovery of sobriety. Those drunk on this wine never commit the sin of becoming teetotallers; as Sa'di says: "no man drunk on that wine served up at the dawn of pre-Eternity becomes sober until vespers are said on the night of the Day of Resurrection.”
― Hossein Elahi Ghomshei PhD, Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry: From Attar to Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz

“For Hafiz, as for the other followers of the religion of love, adoration of beauty (jamal-parasti) reveals itself through the cult's opposition to the self-aggrandizing Shari'a-oriented Islam of the common Muslim.”
― Hossein Elahi Ghomshei PhD, Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry: From Attar to Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz

“Hafiz is Persia's greatest erotic lyricist who remains the supreme—and in some senses the last—prophet of the Religion of Love in Persian literature. There are many verses in his ghazals that appear as a manifesto of this transcendental creed:

   Both human beings and spirits take their sustenance
   From the existence of love. The practice of devotion
   Is a good way to arrive at happiness in both worlds.”
― Hossein Elahi Ghomshei PhD, Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry: From Attar to Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz

“Hafiz often clarifies that the flames of his erotic longing and fire of his desire (atash-i havas) were not inspired by any temporal passion, but that his passion was enkindled in pre-Eternity when the uncreated souls of men first professed divine love for their Lord—

    Flushed and scorched in desire's sultry flames today
    Hafiz's heart not only now aches with woe,
    A brand of grief sears him like the anemone
    For now, for always—and since pre-eternity.”
― Hossein Elahi Ghomshei PhD, Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry: From Attar to Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz

“For Hafiz, the entire world reflects the grace and loveliness of the divine countenance, for, insofar as 'Wheresoever you turn, there is the Face of God' (Koran, II:115), that Face reveals and casts a ray of the infinite divine beauty in the mirrors of man, cosmos, microcosm and macrocosm:

   Your beautiful face divulged to us
      The chapter and verse of divine grace,
         Which is why nothing exists
      Save grace and comeliness
         In our scriptural exegesis.”
― Hossein Elahi Ghomshei PhD, Beauty, Love, and Wisdom in Persian Poetry: From Attar to Rumi, Shabistari and Hafiz