What king is He who fashions a king out of dust, for the sake of one or two beggars makes Himself a beggar!
He acts the mendicant like the poor and wretched with His Give God a loan, that He may give you a kingdom and fashion a throne.
He passes by the dead and bestows life on the dead, He looks upon pain and contrives a cure for the pain.
When He congeals the wind He makes of the wind water, when He causes the water to boil He fashions out of it air.
Look not meanly on the world, for that the world is perishing, for afterwards He will fashion it into an eternal world.
Men marvel at the alchemy which converts copper into gold; regard the copper that every instant fashions alchemy!
If there are a thousand locks on your heart, do not fear; seek the shop of love which the Sweetheart fashions.
He who, without pen and implement, in the idol-house fashions for us a thousand beauteous forms,
Has fashioned for us a thousand Lail¯as and Majn¯uns—what form is it that God fashions for the sake of God!
If your heart is of iron, weep not for its hardness, for the polishing of His bounty is making it into a mirror of purity.
When you cut away from your friends and go beneath the dust, He will make of snakes and ants fair-featured companions.
Did not Moses fashion the serpent into a succour and a support? Does not He every moment fashion fidelity out of very cruelty?
Look this instant into the grave of your body, what heartravishing phantasms He momently fashions there!
When you cleave open your breast, then you see nothing— lest any man should prate idly, saying, “Where does He fashion them?”
The proverb says, “Eat the grapes and enquire not of the garden”; God fashions out of stone two hundred fountains of contentment.
Look inside the stone, and there is no trace of the water; it is from the Unseen that He fashions, not out of low and high.
Out of the unconditioned came this conditioned, for out of No He fashions a myriad sayers of Yes.
Behold two rivers of light flowing from two pieces of fat; marvel not that He fashions a stave into a serpent.
Examine these two ears; where is the amber of speech? Marvel at Him who makes of a hole amber!
He gives the house a soul and makes it a master; when He slays the master, He fashions of him again a house;
Though the form of the master has descended under the dust, He fashions the heart of the master into an abode of majesty.
To the eye of men who worship form, the master departed, but He is fashioning the master a cloak of a different design.
Be silent, speak less with the tongue of praise and paean, that God may fashion you into paean and praise.
