Persian Quotes

“Woman is the light of God.”
― Rumi

“Wake! For the Sun, who scatter'd into flight
The Stars before him from the Field of Night,
Drives Night along with them from Heav'n,
and strikes
The Sultan's Turret with a Shaft of Light”
― Omar Khayyám, The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

“I died a lot
to live a little
with you”
― Yaghma Golroei

“I belong to no religion. My religion is love. Every heart is my temple.”
― Rumi

“صبا زان لولی شنگول سرمست
چه داری اگهی؟ چونست حالش؟”
― حافظ شيرازي

“...it was if another planet were calling. The call, embodied, issued in liquid syllables from the mouth of the Arab sailor who, on the prow of the Vestra each sun-up, looked toward the East and sang the Persian song:
Hearken unto dawn, oh, my soul...
Let good come unto the world.”
― Robert Edison Fulton Jr., One Man Caravan

“این که مدام به سینه ات میکوبد قلب نیست ماهی کوچکی است که دارد نهنگ میشود. ماهی کوچکی که طعم تنگ آزارش میدهد و بوی دریا هوایی اش کرده است.قلب ها همه نهنگانند در اشتیاق اقیانوس. امام کیست که باور کند در سینه اش نهنگی میتپد؟
آدم ها ماهی ها را در تنگ دوست دارند و قلب ها را در سینه. اما ماهی وقتی در دریا شناور شد ماهی است و قلب وقتی در خدا غوطه ور خورد قلب است.
هیچکس نمیتواند نهنگی را در تنگی نگه دارد تو چطور میخواهی قلبت را در سینه نگه داری؟ و چه دردناک است وقتی نهنگی مچاله میشود و وقتی دریا مختصر میشود و وقتی قلب خلاصه میشود و آدم قانع.
این ماهی کوچک اما بزرگ خواهد شد و این تنگ تنگ خواهد شدو این آب ته خواهد کشید.
تو اما کاش کمی دریا مینوشیدی و کاش نقبی میزدی از تنگ سینه به اقیانوس. کاش راه آبی به نامنتها میکشیدی و کاش این قطره را به بینهایت گره میزدی. کاش... بگذریم
دریا و اقیانوس به کنار نامنتها و بینهایت پیشکش
کاش لااقل آب این تنگ را گاهی عوض میکردی، این آب مانده است و بو گرفته است. و تو میدانی آب هم که بماند میگندد، آب هم که بماند لجن میبندد و حیف از این ماهی که در گل و لای بلولد و حیف از این قلب که در غلط بغلتد”
― عرفان نظرآهاری, در سینه‌ات نهنگی می‌تپد

“As for being a Sufi, I think every Iranian by birth is born one. It is in our blood.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, Tajrish

“The white butterly
slowly sinks
into the wine of your age.”
― Bijan Elahi, High Tide of the Eyes

“نیک‌بختی هیچ میرایی پایدار نیست. اگر بخت یار باشد، شاید که دارایی تو از همسایه‌ات بیشتر باشد، اما هرگز از او نیک‌بخت‌تر نیستی.”
― Euripides, Medea

“Some centuries ago all these Safavid explorers from Isfahan go to Europe— France, Italy, Belgium—and they see all these gargantuan mirrors all over. Ornate, massive mirrors everywhere in the palaces, in the great halls. Building-sized mirrors. They come back and they tell the shah about them and of course he wants a bunch for himself. So he tells his explorers, his diplomats, to go back to Europe and bring him mirrors, giant mirrors, buy them for any price. And so they do, but of course as they bring these massive mirrors back across the world, they shatter, they fracture into a billion little mirror pieces. Instead of great panes of mirror, the shah’s architects in Isfahan had all this massively expensive broken mirror glass to work with. And so they begin making these incredible mosaics, shrines, prayer niches. [...] These centuries of Persians trying to copy the European vanity, really their self-reflection. How it arrived to us in shards. How we had to look at ourselves in these broken fragments, and how those mirror tiles found themselves in all these mosques, the tilework, these ornate mosaics. How those spaces made the fractured glimpses of ourselves near sacred.”
― Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!

“According to a medival Turkic saying, "a Turk is never without a Persian [Tat, a sedentary Iranian], just as a cap is never without a head." The relationship was mutually beneficial.”
― Peter B. Golden, Central Asia in World History

“A far cry now that she is in Tajrish. This is District One. The posh end of town. Snuggled deep in between the streets of this bustling roundabout are where the rich live. She looks up, a huge billboard with a blue-eyed model sits there with a phone in his hand. Some brand she’s never heard of. She has never quite understood the infatuation Iranians have with celebrities and colored eyes. To her, it seems like any Iranian with green or blue eyes makes their way either on the big screen or on a billboard. The old traditional concept of Persian beauty, black eyes with a unibrow now replaced with Hollywood-inspired looks. The Leo DiCaprios, Brad Pitts of this world. Still a cheap knock-off of them as well.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, Tajrish

“Everything is made in China nowadays,” the old man replies with a sigh. “They even make carpets better than we do.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, Tajrish

“Amoo meaning uncle, a colloquial abbreviation of “bro” for Farsi speakers.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, Tajrish

“The Persian vizier had outsmarted the British politician.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, Tajrish

“A rosy apple rests in the hands of a crippled man.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, Tajrish

“But revenge and honor are as old as the pillars in Persepolis. The father, the brother or some man from her family will come looking for him.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, Tajrish

“He slits his throat with cotton, a common Persian expression. The slow, methodical way of getting your way.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, Tajrish

“This is the difference when we hear:
you hear the door closing, I hear it opening.

(translated by Kayvan Tahmasebian and Rebecca Ruth Gould)”
― Saeb Tabrizi, Koliat Saeb Tabrizi

“Hey you, feasting at the table on the shore,with bread on your plate, clothes on your body. Someone from the water beckons you, beating the heavy tide with his exhausted hands...
--translated by Kayvan Tahmasebian and Rebecca Ruth Gould”
― Nima Yushij, مجموعه آثار نيما يوشيج، دفتر اول شعر

“Wine should be pale like the lover’s face. Yellow, the color of suffering:
it should be mature and clear, bitter but sweetened with sugar.

-- Translated by Kayvan Tahmasebian and Rebecca Ruth Gould”
― Khaqani, Divan of Khaqani

“زندگی را باور به امید های کوچک رهایی بخش و ناکامی های بزرگ ویران کننده پیش میبرند. روزی که دریابی ناکامی هایت چندان هم بزرگ نیست و امیدهایت واهی و بی ارزشند، مردنت آغاز میشود.”
― آتوسا افشین نوید, بازگشت ماهی‌های پرنده

“But there is so much more to our country – from the legacy of the Persian cultural and linguistic sphere to the acclaimed lattice Jali woodwork…Istalifi pottery and ceramiccs and calligraphy, even our beautiful carpets .”
― Sima Samar, Outspoken: My Fight for Freedom and Human Rights in Afghanistan

“If a man leaves behind him a noble reputation, he should not despair when he has to depart.”
― Abolqasem Ferdowsi, FIRDAUSI... SHAHNAMA (Book of Kings) & Other Poems: New Humanity Books

“پنج میلیارد و نیم آدم روی زمین زندگی میکنند، گمان میکنید چه تعدادشان به زبان گه شما حرف میزنند؟"
میخواستم بگویم اولا زبان ما گه نیست، استاد جمالزاده گفته است شکر است. ثانیا بعضی ها اختلاف کرده اند اما نگفته اند گه است گفته اند قند است. تازه ، این زبانی است که راه هم میرود.”
― رضا قاسمی, همنوایی شبانه ارکستر چوبها

“By the time the news reached Calcutta, it had already given hope and encouragement to the many opponents of Company rule across the length and breadth of Hindustan: it was no accident that when the Great Rebellion did break out in 1857, it did so in sepoy regiments which had been deserted by their British officers in the snows of the Khord Kabul, and in civilian centres such as Lucknow, Agra, and Kanpur where the Persian presses had eagerly reprinted the Afghan epic poems and prose accounts of the British defeat.”
― William Dalrymple, Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan

“Alas, Darius! one brief word must tell thee all the tale— The Persian power is in the dust, gone down in blood and bale!”
― Aeschylus, The Persians

“Is it not possible that those who invented the devil may have studied divinity in Persia, where the creed obtains that powers of light and darkness, Ormuzd and Ahriman, strive perpetually for mastery of the world Surely, otherwise, they would have remembered that if the devil exists, God must have created him, which in itself is blasphemy, for God can create no evil.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Bellarion

“Persian buttercup: A flowering plant with downy stems and colorful, ruffled blossoms whose soft citrus scent recalls youthful joy and friendship”
― Meg Donohue, The Memory Gardener