Words Fallen Upon the Heart from Necip Fazıl Kısakürek
The wisdoms of Necip Fazıl Kısakürek are a selection of short sayings that touch the heart, character, and inner discipline of a person. Although each saying may appear as a simple note on its own, behind it lie fundamental matters such as the discipline of the nafs (the lower self), awareness of mortality, knowledge, adab (proper conduct), and the maturity of the qalb (the heart).
On this page, a neat selection of 72 sayings has been compiled for Necip Fazıl Kısakürek.
01
"I need a me, and someone who understands me. Only I understand myself, and the One who created me."
02
"If you trade those you set out with for those you meet on the road; you will lose both your way and your friend!"
03
"If only I knew on which tree lies the wood for my coffin?"
04
"CHP is not a party. It is an institution of massacre, tasked with making the Turk lose his religion, language, and essence."
05
"Prayer begins after leaving the mosque, pilgrimage begins after returning from Mecca, fasting begins after Ramadan ends."
06
"If the world were beautiful, we would not cry at birth... If we remained pure while living, we would not be washed after death."
07
"Do not cover your head and show your lower part; do not cover your lower part and show your upper part. Cover all, and show your iman (faith)."
08
"My heart is neither troubled nor happy; neither a beloved to itself, nor to anyone else, for the sake of a dream I wander from land to land, walking after my shadow."
09
"My Lord, my Lord, I have learned what this means in Turkish; your love is fire, and fire is a rose garden."
10
"It's over, I do not want you to come, I found you in your absence; leave your shadow in my imagination, do not come, what use is it now?"
11
"People are divided into two: those who divide their time into five, and those who waste their time."
12
"Since silence has fallen to our lot, we have begun to hear the voice of our hearts more beautifully."
13
"We are behind only to say 'boo' to those who call us reactionary..."
14
"Even our accounts at home do not match the market, woe to our reckoning in the hereafter!"
15
"Let there be no wreath or gun carriage at my funeral. Let four truly believing men carry my coffin."
16
"Both under my feet and above my head are at your disposal; you determine where they will be..."
17
"If dying for you means keeping you alive, I would do it a thousand times, I would not let your name be stained, flag and banner are pride and honor, even if my blood flows, I would not let the oppressor rejoice!"
18
"To think is water, this is not it, to think of the beyond; but your thought is to roll in bed."
19
"Cry today, my child, tomorrow you will not be able to cry! What you understand now, you will not understand later!"
20
"There are some who deserve the highest love. There are some who, even if you give them the highest love, are base."
21
"Show that you love. Hiding it is giving others an opportunity."
22
"Neither caravan nor horse remains, all have been erased and gone, good people have mounted good horses and gone."
23
"Do not be like a street lamp, O beloved. Let it be clear for whom you burn."
24
"The aim in poetry is, at the root, Allah and the absolute ḥaqīqa (inner reality); on the branch, secrecy and symbolism."
25
"Fate has kneaded us in the grip of the scorpion; do not mind, it has always been this way, and this world will go on like this!"
26
"To be left fatherless is to be left without a commander in the midst of battle!"
27
"A walī (friend of God) is one who does not assign any share to his nafs (the lower self); he longs for a bowl of ayran for forty years and does not drink it."
28
"If Fatih were to rise from his grave now, neither would I recognize him nor he me. But if he heard that Istanbul was taken by the Byzantines, he would fight again."
29
"Even if you give a hundred, I know a hundred who would not be grateful. I know plains that are siblings to hills. They say the world is on the back of an ox; but I know many oxen on top of the world!"
30
"He is the Giver and the Taker, what will leave you? Whoever sees your panic will think your soul is yours."
31
"Philosophy is to search for a sound walnut in a sea full of rotten walnuts."
32
"May Allah curse 'tanrı'!"
33
"What a world this is, its story is hard."
34
"Come to the mosque vertically, you will come horizontally anyway!"
35
"We are the ummah of the Prophet who prayed until his feet swelled, but we are a nation who sleep until our eyes swell."
36
"The truth of Islam is that one person is everyone, and everyone is one person."
37
"The judge said to Necip Fazıl, whose beard had grown: 'You have turned into a monkey, Necip.' Necip Fazıl turned to the wall and said: 'Now I have turned to the wall.'"
38
"A short note to those who think themselves as valuable as worlds; the world is worth nothing."
39
"They asked Necip Fazıl: 'Why do you love cigarettes so much?' He said: 'It is the only thing that burns for me.'"
40
"What is there to bargain with death, my only capital is the word Allah, Mighty and Majestic."
41
"I understood the matter; art is to seek Allah, this is maʿrifa (gnosis, experiential knowledge of God), the rest is just a game of sticks and stones."
42
"If you do not thank Allah with every laughter, why do you get angry at Him with every tear?"
43
"I stopped, bent, and threw my past into the trash, and only cats and dogs rummage through this trash!"
44
"Losing the one you love is as strange as losing a tooth. You feel the pain at that moment, but the absence lasts a lifetime."
45
"O heart, give up hope from those who leave! Everyone resembles a fleeing dream, as if a voice from the unseen whispers in my ear: meetings are left for the Day of Judgment."
46
"Man is a few drops of blood, a river is a few drops of water: we have come upon a life that has set a trap for life itself."
47
"In the womb of society, I am the birth pangs, I am the unwavering claimant of the sacred trust!"
48
"While my heart wishes to fly to celestial lands; my foot stumbles on the shadows on the ground."
49
"Beware of three kinds of people in life: those who have come down from the mountain, those who have turned away from religion, and the nouveau riche."
50
"Either you rise with Islam, or you rot with denial, this road does not end in the grave, you will see when you go."
51
"If you are very bored with life, go to a cemetery. The dead know well; living is beautiful."
52
"Just as a leaf that falls from the tree is doomed to wither; a person who falls from the heart is doomed to be forgotten."
53
"It is always the nafs (the lower self) that confronts me, even if I die and revive again and again; it is easy to escape from people, if only I could escape from myself."
54
"If the covering had any value in the sight of Allah when not worn with consciousness, then nuns would sit at the head of Paradise."
55
"If Islam came from Europe, you would become Muslim!!"
56
"Death is a beautiful thing, this is the news from behind the curtain, if it were not beautiful, would there be a prophet!"
57
"Death is a festival for the dead, there is joy in the festival; oh how beautiful, there is riding a wooden horse at the festival!"
58
"I saw a walī (friend of God) of Allah (c.c) six years ago, it was an evening so beautiful that time would freeze."
59
"If I could stop the passerby, pulling him by his skirt; I would ask: do you know you will die?"
60
"A woman covers her head when entering the cemetery, uncovers it when leaving, to cover before the dead and uncover before the living is incomprehensible."
61
"Bow much, O stubborn nafs (the lower self), bow much before me."
62
"Those who stink up the times call me reactionary; they think they are rising, but the lower they go, the closer to the ground they get."
63
"Fate is writing written with milk on white paper; if you can, try to scrape the white from the white!"
64
"Forgive me for every color I gave my eye, every sound I gave my ear, every breath I took without your knowledge."
65
"Either you bow your head only to Allah, and to no one else, or you bow your head to everyone and it is worth nothing."
66
"Those descend the slopes, always step by step; but my destiny is to thirst on the slopes."
67
"Whenever death comes to your mind, do not groan and sigh; with this state, you will have offended my Lord. When death knocks on the door, do not throw the house into panic; when it comes, you will have already gone."
68
"We ask from women what they do not have; the longing remains, and we leave."
69
"In a single seed, the whole tree is hidden with its trunk, branches, leaves, and fruit."
70
"There is no compulsion in religion, man is certainly free! Whoever wishes matures in this world, whoever wishes matures in the hereafter!"
71
"Effort upon effort for a world of three days, but no effort for an eternal life, how strange."
72
"I cannot get out, mirrors, mirrors are a dungeon. I cannot look, in the mirror, in the mirror is conscience; do not wait for me, that was a whim; I cannot come, mirrors have blocked my way."