Certainly many if not most of Sufi love poems can be read as if they were addressed to a woman. In fact, without doubt a certain number of them were inspired by a woman‘s beautiful features, but this did not prevent the poet from viewing her loveliness as the mirror of God‘s Beauty. (p. 287)

The temporal cannot know the Eternal, so to the extent that the Sufi contemplates God in his heart, God Himself is the contemplator: Ultimately, the Witness, the Witnesser, and the Witnessing are all one. (p. 288)

Whoever enters the Way without a guide will take a hundred years to travel a two-day journey. . . . – Rumi (p. 123)

The Sufi‘s book is not composed of ink and letters: It is naught but a heart white as snow. The scholar‘s provisions are the marks of the pen. What are the Sufi‘s provisions? The footprints of the saints. – Rumi (p. 131)

The fall of man is the result of the blinding of the ‘eye of the heart’ (chashm-i dil or ‘ayn al-qalb), which alone sees with the vision of gnosis.