Dervish Quotes

Either appear as you are
Or be as you appear
Be like the sun in compassion and mercy
Be like the light in covering others' shame
Be like a stream in generosity and beneficence
Be like earth in modesty and humility
Be like the sea in tolerance
Be like death in irritability and anger
Either appear as you are
Or be as you appear
The Dervish Gate ~ Ahmet Umit

Bill O'Reilly calls his tv show the "No Spin Zone" but the man is practically a whirling dervish. He combines willful ignorance with a simple child-like faith in the system that, not coincidentally, has made him a millionaire. ~ Earl Lee

Let me tell you a joke, Rora said.
Mujo wakes up one day, after a long night of drinking, and asks himself what the meaning of life is. He goes to work, but realizes that is not what life is or should be. He decides to read some philosophy and for years studies everything from the old Greeks onward, but can't find the meaning of life. Maybe it's the family, he thinks, so he spends time with his wife, Fata, and the kids, but finds no meaning in that and so he leaves them. He thinks, Maybe helping others is the meaning of life, so he goes to medical school, graduates with flying colors, goes to Africa to cure malaria and transplants hearts, but cannot discover the meaning of life. He thinks, maybe it's the wealth, so he becomes a businessman, starts making money hand over fist, millions of dollars, buys everything there is to buy, but that is not what life is about. Then he turns to poverty and humility and such, so he gives everything away and begs on the streets, but still he cannot see what life is. He thinks maybe it is literature: he writes novel upon novel, but the more he writes the more obscure the meaning of life becomes. He turns to God, lives the life of a dervish, reads and contemplates the Holy Book of Islam - still, nothing. He studies Christianity, then Judaism, then Buddhism, then everything else - no meaning of life there. Finally, he hears about a guru living high up in the mountains somewhere in the East. The guru, they say, knows what the meaning of lif ~ Aleksandar Hemon

Where's the fire, Lucy Dervish?'
In me. Under my skin. ~ Cath Crowley

In Islam, and especially among the Sufi Orders, siyahat or 'errance' - the action or rhythm of walking - was used as a technique for dissolving the attachments of the world and allowing men to lose themselves in God. The aim of a dervish was to become a 'dead man walking': one whose body stays alive on the earth yet whose soul is already in Heaven. A Sufi manual, the Kashf-al-Mahjub, says that, toward the end of his tourney, the dervish becomes the Way not the wayfarer, i.e. a place over which something is passing, not a traveller following his own free will...it was quite similar to an Aboriginal concept, 'Many men afterwards become country, in that place, Ancestors.' By spending his whole life walking and singing his Ancestor's Songline, a man eventually became the track, the Ancestor and the song. The Wayless Way, where the Sons of God lose themselves and, at the same time, find themselves. ~ Meister Eckhart

Dervish and a girl with limp blond hair were playing a lethargic ~ Khaled Hosseini

Ataturk approved of the mevlevi dervish approach to God as being 'an expression of Turkish genius' that reclaimed Islam from what he saw as hide-bound, backward Arab tradition. ~ Stephen Kinzer

Title 'Yikin heykellerimi'

->'Destroy and shatter the statues you have built of me'

O nation
I am Kemal Mustafa
If my thoughts and beliefs are not of this day and age
If my wisdom isn't still the most authentic mentor
Then let my tongue cleave to the roof of my palate
I apoligize

Forget everything I said
Destroy and shatter the statues you have built of me

If freedom isn't still the supreme value
If you'd rather have slaves stay chained

Forget everything I said
Destroy and shatter the statues you have built of me

If you see no sense in living a civilized life
If you want to be sent back in time to the middle ages and wish to put a crown on the head of a man who spits into the face of art

Forget everything I said
Destroy and shatter the statues you have built of me

If the pain of war violence was not enough
If peace at home, peace in the world has no meaning
If to be awarded requires an arms race

Forget everything I said
Destroy and shatter the statues you have built of me

If you miss the fez and the veil and prefer to light the night
If you're still hoping to find healing from a dervish, a sheik or an amulet

Forget everything I said
Destroy and shatter the statues you have built of me

If you say women should not be equal to men and should be covered in black sheets ~ Suleyman Apaydin

Busy days galore ... thoughts in a kaleidoscope of dervish dances. ~ Al Cash

Sister Amelia spun, a whirling dervish in the service of the All-Mother, removing unnatural creatures from the lake. ~ Milton J. Davis

Here is a book so dull that a whirling dervish could read himself to sleep with it. If you were to recite even a single page in the open air, birds would fall out of the sky and dogs drop dead. ~ Clive James

Let's not muddy the brook ; Perhaps a pigeon is drinking water at a distance, Or a pitcher is being filled in a village, Or a dervish may be dipping dry bread in the brook.
The folk upstream understand the water.
They did not muddy the brook. We also must not muddy the brook... ~ Sohrab Sepehri

You thought I was a werewolf?" Dervish asks.
"Yes" I answer hollowly.
"You ass. ~ Darren Shan

A man said to a Dervish: "Why do I not see you more often?" The Dervish replied, "Because the words 'Why have you not been to see me?' are sweeter to my ear than the words 'Why have you come again? ~ Robert Greene

And were you able to find Him?" I inquired.
A shadow crossed his face as the dervish noded and said.
"Indeed, He was with me all along. ~ Elif Shafak

THE INTEREST WITHOUT THE CAPITAL

The lover's food is the love of the bread;
no bread need be at hand:
no one who is sincere in his love is a slave to existence.

Lovers have nothing to do with with with existence;
lovers have the interest without the capital.

Without wings they fly around the world;
without hands they carry the polo ball off the field.

That dervish who caught the scent of Reality
used to weave basket even though his hand had been cut off.

Lover have pitched their tents in nonexistence:
they are of one quality and one essence, as nonexistence is. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi

(A dervish was tempted by the devil to cease calling upon Allah, on the ground that Allah never answered, "Here am I." The Prophet Khadir appeared to him in a vision with a message from God.) Was it not I who summoned thee to my service? Was it not I who made thee busy with my name? Thy calling "Allah!"was my "Here am I." Jalal-uddin Rumi ~ Aldous Huxley

I want a performance style that's more cerebral and emotional than physical. I want to be a creative artist, not a whirling dervish. ~ Scott Weiland

The king said, 'What wisdom have you gained from this event?' The scholar replied: 'I now understand that if anyone were to remain perceptive to the real condition of men all the time, he would go mad.' The dervish told him: 'Now you know that the dervish lore includes the knowledge of when to be awake and when to remain asleep. ~ Idries Shah

She climbs a tree
And scrapes her knee
Her dress has got a tear.
She waltzes on her way to mass
And whistles on the stair.
And underneath her wimple
She has curlers in her hair!
Maria's not an asset to the abbey.

She's always late for chapel,
But her penitence is real.
She's always late for everything!
Except for every meal.
I hate to have to say it
But I very firmly feel
Maria's not an asset to the abbey!

I'd like to say a word on her behalf.
Maria makes me laugh.

How do you solve a problem like Maria?
How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?
How do you find a word that means Maria?
A flibbertigibbet!
A will o' the wisp!
A clown!

Many a thing you know you'd like to tell her,
Many a thing she ought to understand.
But how do you make her stay
And listen to all you say,
How do you keep a wave upon the sand?
Oh, how do you solve a problem like Maria?
How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?

When I'm with her I'm confused
Out of focus and bemused,
And I never know exactly where I am.
Unpredictable as weather,
She's as flighty as a feather,
She's a darling,
She's a demon,
She's a lamb.

She'd out-pester any pest,
Drive a hornet from his nest,
She can throw a whirling dervish out of whirl.
She is gentle,
Rodgers & Hammerstein

She listens, determined to locate the trapped bird that had called out from within the madness of suffering. But there is only silence now, not even a halting fragment. Ali! Ali! A dervish, having renounced dealings with all words except that one, never utters another, in any circumstance ... The sentence enters her mind from a book she had been looking at earlier. Her gaze is drifting across the sky where the moon sits in a great cold ring as she recalls more and more words. Only one thing matters, only one word. If we speak, it is because we have not found that thing, nor shall find it. ~ Nadeem Aslam

Bismilahir-rahmanir-rahim!
I call to witness the ink, the quill, and the script,
which flows from the quill;
I call to witness the faltering shadows of the sinking evening,
the night and all she enlivens;
I call to witness the moon when she waxes, and the sunrise when it dawns.
I call to witness the Resurrection Day and the soul that accuses itself;
I call to witness time, the beginning and end of all things - to witness that every man always suffers loss. ~ Mesa Selimovic

The tripartite structure - so you remember the third brother, second brother, first brother, or the first dervish, second dervish, and third dervish. This is very like embroidering a cloth, as you have to know where you are with the knots. ~ Marina Warner

Then we still have time!" I gasp. "It's not too late. We know what he's going to do. We'll return to the cave and fight."
"We?" Kernel says sarcastically.
"Yes! I'll fight to save Dervish and Bill-E. I don't care what those monsters throw at us. When it's family, it's different."
"You really think you can choose not to be a coward if and when it suits you?" Kernel jeers.
Beranabus interrupts wearily before I can retort. "It doesn't matter. You're arguing about nothing. The time for heroics has passed. ~ Darren Shan

Saying grace before a meal. Watching our breath. Repeating the ninety-nine names of Allah. Whirling like a dervish. Prayer. They all have one objective: to get us to pause just long enough to realize that life, your life, is a freaking miracle. The least you can do is pay attention. ~ Eric Weiner

Guess what: God created beings not to act in a morality play but to
experience what is unfathomable, to elicit what can become, to descend
into the darkness of creation and reveal it to him, to mourn and celebrate
enigma and possibility. The universe is a whirling dervish, not a hanging
judge in robes. ~ Richard Grossinger

Hitler is a dancing dervish. He must be shot down. ~ Henning Von Tresckow

THE DANCE OF ANGELS

Suzy Kassem

He spins and spins and spins
To remove all three layers of him
And with devout discipline
He spirals to ignite the light within.
He becomes a part
Of the solar system
And spirals to its cosmic hymn.
His soul transcends through
The mouth of God
To join the source
Of everything.

He turns and turns and turns
To open up windows to the universe
And with each circle of love he twirls
The love in his heart
Radiates and bursts.
His thirst for a meeting with the divine
Has been his only quest since birth,
And while rotating like the hand of time
He sings the 'AH' of an angel's verse.
As he turns and turns and turns
A million emotions and vibrations submerge
A luminous spectacle worth a million candles,
The Sufi dancer is poetry without
Words.


THE DANCE OF ANGELS by Suzy Kassem ~ Suzy Kassem

She can throw a whirling dervish out of whirl. ~ Rodgers And Hammerstein

A Sufi manual, the Kashf-al-Mahjub, says that, towards the end of his journey, the dervish becomes the Way not the wayfarer, i.e. a place over which something is passing, not a traveller following his own free will. ~ Bruce Chatwin