Quotes From "The Forty Rules Of Love" By Elif Shafak

How can love be worthy of its name if one selects solely the pretty things and leaves out the hardships? It is easy to enjoy the good and dislike the bad. Anybody can do that. The real challenge is to love the good and the bad together, not because you need to take the rough with the smooth but because you need to go beyond such descriptions and accept love in its entirety. Elif Shafak

If a stone hits a river, the river will treat it as yet another commotion in its already tumultuous course. Nothing unusual. Nothing unmanageable. If a stone hits a lake, however, the lake will never be the same again. Elif Shafak

Every winner is inclined to think he will be triumphant forever. Every loser tends to fear that he is going to be beaten forever. But both are wrong for the same reason: Everything changes except the face of god. Elif Shafak

Fret not where the road will take you. Instead concentrate on the first step. That's the hardest part and that's what you are responsible for. Once you take that step let everything do what it naturally does and the rest will follow. Do not go with the flow. Be the flow. Elif Shafak

Father, I am from a different egg than your other children. Think of me as a duckling raised by hens. I am not a domestic bird destined to spend his life in a chicken coop. The water that scares you rejuvenates me. For unlike you I can swim, and swim I shall. The ocean is my homeland. If you are with me, come to the ocean. If not, stop interfering with me and go back to the chicken coop. Elif Shafak

Choose Love, Love! Without the sweet life of Love, living is a burden - as you have seen. Elif Shafak

Faith is only a word if there is no love at its center, so flaccid and lifeless, vague and hollow - not anything you could truly feel. Elif Shafak

To each his own way and his own prayer. God does not take us at our word. He looks deep into our hearts. It is not the ceremonies or rituals that make a difference, but whether our hearts are sufficiently pure or not. Elif Shafak

What is the point of roaming the world when it's the same misery everywhere? Elif Shafak

Three scents accompany my memories of this place: cut wood, poppy-seed bread, and the soft, crisp smell of snow. Elif Shafak

Each time I say good-bye to a place I like, I feel like I am leaving a part of me behind. I guess whether we choose to travel as much as Marco Polo did or stay in the same spot from cradle to grave, life is a sequence of births and deaths. Moments are born and moments die. For new experiences to come to light, old ones need to wither away. Elif Shafak

You are too timid for me. You care too much about what other people think. But you know what? Because you are so desperate to win the approval of others, you'll never get rid of their criticisms, no matter how hard you try. You say you want to travel the path, but you don't want to sacrifice anything to that end. Money, fame, power, lavishness, or carnal pleasure - whatever it is that one holds most dear in life, one should dispose of that first. Elif Shafak

Inside, I found three things: a silver mirror, a silk handkerchief, and a glass flask of ointment. These items will help you on your journey. use them when need be. If you ever lose faith in yourself, the mirror will show your inner beauty. In case your reputation is stained, the handkerchief will remind you of how pure your heart is. As for the balm, it will heal your wounds, both inside and outside. Elif Shafak

It was always like this. When you spoke the truth, they hated you. The more you talked about love, the more they hated you. Elif Shafak

Let us choose one another as companions! Let us sit at each other's feet! Inwardly we have many harmonies - think not That we are only what we see. Elif Shafak

There were many words piled up inside my chest, stories waiting to be told. I wanted to hand all this knowledge to one other person, neither a master nor a disciple. I sought an equal - a companion. Elif Shafak

Some people make the mistake of confusing "submission" with "weakness", whereas it is anything but. Submission is a form of peaceful acceptance of the terms of the universe including the things we are currently unable to change or comprehend. Elif Shafak

Some people make the mistake of confusing "submission" with "weakness", whereas it is anything but. Submission is a form of peaceful acceptance of the terms of the universe including the things we are currently unable to change or comprehend. I accepted the fact that there are things beyond my limits. I can only see some parts, like floating fragments from a movie, but the bigger scheme is beyond my comprehension. . Elif Shafak

Believers are each other's mirrors. Elif Shafak

Earth: the things that are solid, absorbed and still. Water: the things that are fluid, changing and unpredictable. Wind: the things that shift, evolve and challenge. Fire: the things that damage, devastate and distroy. The void: the things that are present through their absence Elif Shafak

Patience does not mean to passively endure. It means to be farsighted enough to trust the end result of a process Elif Shafak

Whatever happens in your life, no matter how troubling things might seem, do not enter the neighborhood of despair. Even when all doors remain closed, God will open up a new path only for you. Be thankful! Elif Shafak

When you kill someone, something from that person passes to you - a sigh, a smell or a gesture. I call it "the curse of the victim." It clings to your body and seeps into your skin, going all the way into your heart, and thus continues to live within you. I carry with me the traces of all the men I have killed. I wear them around my neck like invisible necklaces, feeling their presence against my flesh, tight and heavy. In every murderer breathes the man he murdered. Elif Shafak

Doubts are good. It means you are alive and searching. One does not become a believer overnight. He thinks he is a believer; then something happens in his life and he becomes an unbeliever, after that, he becomes a believer again and then an unbeliever again, and so on. Until we reach a certain stage, we constantly waver. This is the only way forward. At each new step, we come closer to the Truth. . Elif Shafak

Even a speck of love should not go unappreciated, because, as Rumi said, love is the water of life. Elif Shafak

Quit worrying about hell or dreaming about heaven as they are both present inside this very moment. Why worry so much about the aftermath, an imaginary future, when this very moment is the only time we can truly and fully experience the presence and absence of God in our lives? Motivated by neither the fear of punishment nor the desire to be rewarded in heaven, Sufis love God simply because they love him. Elif Shafak

Before passing through the gates of a town I've never visited, I take a minute to salute its saints - the dead and the living, the known and the hidden. Never in my life have I arrived at a new place without getting the blessing of its saints first. It makes no difference to me whether that place belongs to Muslims, Christians, or Jews. I believe that the saints are beyond such trivial nominal distinctions. A saint belongs to all humanity. Elif Shafak

As I went through all these experiences, I began to compile a list that wasn't written down in any book, only inscribed in my soul. To me these were as universal, dependable, and invariable as the laws of nature. Together they constituted The Forty Rules of the Religion of Love, which could be attained through love and love only. Elif Shafak

When something needs to be said, I'll say it even if the whole world grabs me by the neck and tells me to keep quiet. Elif Shafak