Nafs Quotes

One of the greatest tazkiya (purification) of the nafs (self) is to part with your money and to give it to people who deserve it.

My Nafs screams out for what it desires. But my will to be free screams louder.

If you want an enemy, the soul (nafs) is sufficient. If you want advice, death is sufficient.

Never have I dealt with anything more difficult than my own soul, which sometimes helps me and sometimes opposes me.

Your worst enemy is hiding within yourself, and that enemy is your nafs or false ego.

The path to the Truth is a labour of the heart, not of the head. Make your heart your primary guide! Not your mind. Meet, challenge and ultimately prevail over your nafs with your heart. Knowing your ego will lead you to the knowledge of God.

There are four types of oceans. Passions are the ocean of sins, the self (nafs) is the ocean of lust, death is the ocean of life, and the grave is the ocean of distress

Change your 'Nafs', change the world.

In Sufi terms the crushing of the ego is called Nafs Kushi. And how do we crush it? We crush it by sometimes taking ourselves to task. When the self says, 'O no, I must not be treated like this,' then we say, 'What does it matter?' When the self says, 'He ought to have done this, she ought to have said that,' we say, 'What does it matter, either this way or that way? Every person is what he is; you cannot change him, but you can change yourself.' That is the crushing. ... It is only in this way that we can crush our ego.

That Islam you see on TV does not represent me, I'm too busy waging jihad against myself, My own nafs are my enemy. I'm sorry that Muslim and Muslim lands do not represent Islam, Our religion is perfect, but we on the other hand.

Your Nafs is just like a suckling child. If you do not take the pains to wean him, he will yearn for his mother's breast even when he's grown up. Therefore you should not try to satisfy your lust by indulging in sins. This will only increase the desire for more sins. The same is the case with the disease of gluttony. The more a person eats, the more his hunger increases.

To blame others for our misfortunes is always a victory for the nafs.

Fight against your ego with the four swords of training: eat little, sleep little, speak little, and be patient when people harm you... Then the ego will walk the paths of obedience, like a fleeing horseman in the field of battle.

Your nafs (soul/desires) is your first battlefield. If you are victorious over it, then you will find the other battlefields easier.

When one talks about being like a dead corpse in the hands of a spiritual teacher it means being able to surrender one's will, specially one's nafs al ammarah, that is a part of our soul which is again a Quranic term, which commands us to evil - we must surrender that. That's what it means. It doesn't make you become part of a cog of a machine.

Nothing kills the soul that commands to evil (Nafs al Ammarra) like seeing the beauty of the heart.

His constant fight is with the Nafs (self-interest), the root of all disharmony and the only enemy of man. By crushing this enemy man gains mastery over himself; this wins for him mastery over the whole universe, because the wall standing between the self and the Almighty has been broken down. Gentleness, mildness, respect, humility, modesty, self-denial, conscientiousness, tolerance and forgiveness are considered by the Sufi as the attributes which produce harmony within one's own soul as well as within that of another.