Top 59 Quotes & Sayings by Said Nursi

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Turkish theologian Said Nursi.

Last updated on December 21, 2024.

Said Nursi, also spelled Said-i Nursî or Said-i Kurdî, and commonly known with the honorifics Bediüzzaman and Üstad among his followers, was a Kurdish Sunni Muslim theologian who wrote the Risale-i Nur Collection, a body of Qur'anic commentary exceeding six thousand pages. Believing that modern science and logic was the way of the future, he advocated teaching religious sciences in secular schools and modern sciences in religious schools.

Turkish - Theologian | 1878 - 1960

Source: Wikipedia

Establish with all of your powers a union with your fellows and brothers in religion that is stronger than the union of the worldly!

Said Nursi

Belief is so valuable and living that it infuses with life everything it enters! It transforms the fleeting glimmer of transitory life into eternal life, dispelling the transience in it.

Said Nursi

The divine wisdom which requires a division of labor has sown different abilities and tendencies in human nature and has enabled human beings to carry out the duty of establishing sciences and developing technology. The fulfillment of this duty is obligatory upon humanity as a whole, though not on every individual.

Said Nursi

The magnificent cosmos is a palace that has the sun and the moon as its lamps and the stars as its candles; time is like a rope or ribbon hung within it, on to which the Glorious Creator each year threads a new world.

Said Nursi

At the resurrection, there will be the return of spirits to their bodies, the revivification of the bodies, and the remaking of the bodies.

Said Nursi

There has been no persecution I have not tasted, no oppression I have not suffered. I neither care for Paradise nor fear Hell. If I see my nation's belief secured, I will not even care about burning in Hell, for while my body is burning, my heart will be as if in a rose garden.

Said Nursi

The origin of all revolutions and corruption, and the spur and source of all base morals are just two sayings: The First Saying: 'So long as I'm full, what is it to me if others die of hunger?' The Second Saying: 'You suffer hardship so that I can live in ease; you work so that I can eat.'

Said Nursi

The Qur'an, the universe, and humanity are three kinds of manifestations of one truth.

Said Nursi

Something theoretical in the past may become evident and established in the present or in the future. It is a self-evident fact that creation has an innate tendency towards perfection, and it is through this that creation is bound to the law of development or gradual perfection.

Said Nursi

In Divine unity and the affirmation of it, Divine beauty and dominical perfection become apparent. If there was no unity, that pre-eternal treasury would remain hidden.

Said Nursi

Some sciences need mutual support and assistance to develop. The majority of these are physical sciences. Mutual support has almost no use in other disciplines, such as attainment of intuitive knowledge of God or spiritual progress.

Said Nursi

If you look at the Qur'an with the eyes of a sound heart, you will see that its six aspects are so brilliant and transparent that no darkness, no misguidance, no doubt or suspicion, no trickery could enter it or find a fissure through which to enter and violate its purity.

Said Nursi

Time has shown that Paradise is not cheap, and neither is Hell unnecessary.

Said Nursi

The Giver of Existence is Eternally Existent; there is no harm, therefore, in the passing of beings, for the things that are loved continue to exist through the continuance of the One Who gave them existence, the Necessary Existent.

Said Nursi

Belief contains so many truths pertaining to God's Names and the realities contained in the universe that the most perfect science, knowledge, and virtue is belief and knowledge of God originating in a belief based on argument and investigation.

Said Nursi

The transparency of a metaphor displays the glint of truth. But if a metaphor is taken for a reality, it then becomes dense and masks the truth it is meant to display.

Said Nursi

The All-Wise Maker attaches hundreds of instances of wisdom to each of the beings in the palace of the universe and equips them to perform hundreds of duties. To all trees He bestows instances of wisdom to the number of its fruits and gives duties to the number of its flowers.

Said Nursi

The life of the hereafter is the outcome of all this world.

Said Nursi

Be certain of this: that the highest aim of creation and its most important result are belief in God. The most exalted rank in humanity and its highest degree are the knowledge of God contained within belief in God.

Said Nursi

The ever-renewed instances of beauty and fairness passing over the faces of the beings in the universe show that they are shadows of the manifestations of an Eternal Beauteous One.

Said Nursi

I can live without bread, but I can't live without freedom.

Said Nursi

The truth cannot be deceptive, and one who sees it cannot be deceived.

Said Nursi

When I was ten years old, I had great pride in myself, which sometimes even took the form of boasting and self-praise; although I myself did not want to, I used to assume the air of someone undertaking some great work and mighty act of heroism.

Said Nursi

The purest joy for the human spirit and the sheerest delight for man's heart are the rapture of the spirit contained within the love of God.

Said Nursi

What agent is there other than the Creator of the heavens and earth who can know whatever occurs in our heart, down to its most subtle and secret thoughts, and illuminate the future for us by establishing the Hereafter, saving us from the countless suffocating waves of the world?

Said Nursi

The mirror to the beautiful is beautiful.

Said Nursi

People who do not recognize their Owner and discover their Master are miserable and bewildered. But those who do, and then take refuge in His Mercy and rely on His Power, see this desolate world transformed into a place of rest and felicity, a place of exchange for the Hereafter.

Said Nursi

Sin penetrates to the heart, darkens and hardens it until it extinguishes the light of belief. Each sin has a path that leads to unbelief. Unless that sin is swiftly obliterated by seeking God's forgiveness, it grows from a worm into a snake that gnaws at the heart.

Said Nursi

All true happiness, pure joy, sweet bounties, and unclouded pleasure are contained within the knowledge and love of God.

Said Nursi

I can bear my own sorrows, but the sorrows arising from the calamities visiting Islam and Muslims have crushed me. I feel each blow delivered to the Muslim world as delivered first to my own heart.

Said Nursi

Tahir Pasha assigned me a room when I was staying in his residence, and every night before sleeping, I would spend around three hours going over the books I had memorized. It would take me three months to go through the lot. Thanks be to God, all those works became steps ascending to the truths of the Qur'an.

Said Nursi

Practice the brotherhood, love, and cooperation insistently enjoined by hundreds of Qur'anic verses and traditions of the Prophet!

Said Nursi

Do not suffer pain and torment without reason. Somebody All-Powerful and All-Compassionate owns everything. Rely on His Power and do not accuse His Compassion. Renounce grief and anxiety ad accept relief. Be rid of your troubles and find serenity.

Said Nursi

A thing's innate disposition or God-given nature does not lie; whatever this innate disposition says is the truth.

Said Nursi

The fact that there is a unity in everything demonstrates that they are the works and artefacts of a single being. The universe is like a rosebud swathed in a thousand veils of unity. Or it is a single macroanthropos dressed in unities to the number of Divine Names and universal Divine works.

Said Nursi

Creation's highest aim and most sublime result is belief in God. The most exalted rank of humanity is knowledge of God.

Said Nursi

The beauty of a finely worked object points to the beauty of the craftsmanship. The beauty of the craftsmanship points to the beauty of the name which was the source of the craftsmanship. The beauty of the name of the craftsman's art points to the beauty of the craftsman's attributes manifested in that art.

Said Nursi

The beauty of man's being, fashioned as he is in the fairest of forms, demonstrates the existence of the Maker, while at the same time the fact that, together with his comprehensive abilities, lodged in that fairest of forms, he soon declines and dies, demonstrates the existence of the resurrection.

Said Nursi

The Qur'an, throughout all of its verses, aims mainly to establish and confirm four basic, universal truths: the existence and Oneness of the Maker of the universe; Prophethood; bodily Resurrection; and worship and justice.

Said Nursi

Belief is not restricted to a brief affirmation based on imitation; rather, it has degrees and stages of development. It is like a seed growing into a fully grown, fruit-bearing tree; like the sun's image in a mirror or in a drop of water to its images on the sea's surface and to the sun itself.

Said Nursi

The raising to life of all animate beings at the resurrection of the dead can be no more difficult for Divine Power than restoring to life a fly in the spring, heavy with the death-stained sleep of winter.

Said Nursi

In spring, the dead trees, roots, and animals come to life again exactly as they were, thus providing hundreds of thousands of examples, specimens, and proofs of the supreme resurrection.

Said Nursi

Attributing to anything or anyone more good than God has attributed to them is not a positive move, nor does it mean that you have done them any good. A single grain of truth is preferable to a bumper harvest of false imaginings.

Said Nursi

Those who are greatly occupied in physical or material matters lack sufficient knowledge or have only superficial understanding of spiritual matters. Therefore, such people's opinions and judgments concerning spiritual matters carry no weight.

Said Nursi

In the district of Hizan, through the influence of Shaikh Abdurrahman Tagi, known as Seyda, so many students, teachers, and scholars emerged, I was sure all Kurdistan took pride in them and their scholarly debates and wide knowledge and Sufi way. These were the people who would conquer the face of the earth!

Said Nursi

If you can visualize the whole of spring and see Paradise with the eye of belief, you may understand the utter majesty of everlasting Beauty. If you respond to that Beauty with the beauty of belief and worship, you will be a most beautiful creature.

Said Nursi

Nature is a divine art; it cannot be the artist. It is a dominical book and cannot be the scribe. It is an embroidery and cannot be the embroiderer. It is a register and cannot be the accountant. It is the law and cannot be the power.

Said Nursi

The signs, proofs, and evidences of Divine unity are incalculable.

Said Nursi

All true happiness, pure joy, sweet bounties, and untroubled pleasure lie in knowledge of God and love of God; they cannot exist without them.

Said Nursi

If our inner being was to be turned to the outside, and our outer being turned inward, we would appear with more wounds and diseases than the Prophet Job. For each sin that we commit and each doubt that enters our mind causes wounds in our heart and our spirit.

Said Nursi

Worry is itself an illness, since worry is an accusation against Divine Wisdom, a criticism of Divine Mercy.

Said Nursi

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

Said Nursi

Life is a manifestation of unity.

Said Nursi

A thing's innate disposition does not lie.

Said Nursi

He causes huge bodies like sun to proclaim His Majesty through His Names the All-Gracious, Great, reciting: ' O Glorious One, O Great One, O Mighty One', while tiny animate creatures like flies and fish proclaim His Mercy, reciting: 'O Gracious One, O Compassionate One, O Generous One

Said Nursi

Can you not see the numerous designs made by God as signs, similitudes, or analogies of resurrection? He has placed them in every era, the alteration of day and night, even in the coming and going of clouds.

Said Nursi

Do what you do only for God's sake, start for God's sake, work for God's sake, and act within the sphere of God's good approval.

Said Nursi

I am not free and independent; I am a traveler with duties.

Said Nursi