Persian poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, and theologian.

Lovers find secret places inside this violent world where they make transactions with beauty.

Beyond Islam and unbelief there is a desert plain. For us, there is a passion in the midst of that expanse. The knower who reaches there will prostrate, there is neither Islam nor unbelief, nor any 'where' in that place.

I belong to no religion. My religion is love. Every heart is my temple.

I was dead, then alive.Weeping, then laughing.The power of love came into me,and I became fierce like a lion,then tender like the evening star.

When I am with you, we stay up all night.When you're not here, I can't go to sleep.Praise God for those two insomnias!And the difference between them.

I am yours. Don't give myself back to me.

I choose to love you in silence…For in silence I find no rejection,I choose to love you in loneliness…For in loneliness no one owns you but me,I choose to adore you from a distance…For distance will shield me from pain,I choose to kiss you in the wind…For the wind is gentler than my lips,I choose to hold you in my dreams…For in my dreams, you have no end.

Lovers find secret placesinside this violent worldwhere they make transactions with beauty.

Darkness may hide the trees and the flowers from the eyes but it cannot hide love from the soul.

Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone's soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.

I am your moon and your moonlight tooI am your flower garden and your water tooI have come all this way, eager for youWithout shoes or shawlI want you to laughTo kill all your worriesTo love youTo nourish you.

If you are seeking, seek us with joyFor we live in the kingdom of joy.Do not give your heart to anything elseBut to the love of those who are clear joy,Do not stray into the neighborhood of despair.For there are hopes: they are real, they exist –Do not go in the direction of darkness –I tell you: suns exist.

Gamble everything for love, if you're a true human being.

In your light I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems. You dance inside my chest where no-one sees you, but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art.

You are an ocean in a drop of dew, all the universes in a thin sack of blood. What are these pleasures then, these joys, these worlds that you keep reaching for, hoping they will make you more alive?

The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell youDon't go back to sleep!You must ask for what you really want.Don't go back to sleep!People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch,The door is round and openDon't go back to sleep!