Elif Safak Quotes

Both heaven and hell are within us.

I am my own heaven and hell!

If your heart is a volcano, how shall you expect flowers to bloom?

Anger cannot rest in the bosom where love reigns.

I know that you cannot hate other people without hating yourself.

I'm very sentimental and ambitious. I like to be relaxed and I like to live a peaceful existence, but that's very difficult considering I'm very neurotic. On the inside, I'm very chilled - but on the outside I'm a big mess of worry!

Emerson, I am trying to live, as you said we must, the examined life. But there are days I wish there was less in my head to examine, not to speak of the busy heart.

I could see no reason for being sad. It´s just that it makes me unhappy not to feel happy.

I was creative before I started meditating, but I had, looking back, a weakness. I wasn't self-assured. I had a little bit of melancholy. I had a lot of anger for my situations in life, and I would take this out on my first wife.

Hate is love looking for itself everyplace but where love is.

There are only two emotions: love and fear. All positive emotions come from love, all negative emotions from fear. From love flows happiness, contentment, peace, and joy. From fear comes anger, hate, anxiety and guilt. It's true that there are only two primary emotions, love and fear. But it's more accurate to say that there is only love or fear, for we cannot feel these two emotions together, at exactly the same time. They're opposites. If we're in fear, we are not in a place of love. When we're in a place of love, we cannot be in a place of fear.

You can't hate/love others without loving/hating yourself first.

Love cannot exorcise the gifts of hate. / Hate cannot exorcize what has no weight, / But laughter we can never over-rate.

We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves.

There is the theory... that you live in two places: You either live in fear, or you live in love.

I am cheerful. I don't know if I'm happy. There is a difference, you know.

Whenever you're feeling grateful, you are not feeling frustrated and angry and all those negative states that we go into. And that's a big benefit in and of itself.

Emotions are messy and hard to figure out.

If you don't deal with your demons, they will deal with you, and it's gonna hurt.

When love is suppressed hate takes its place.

It's very dependent on your state of mind. And your emotional state as well. And a lot of it comes pouring out, you don't really have that much control with it.

The greater jihad is proclaiming war on our ego's destructive and negative emotions and thoughts... which prevent us from attaining perfection.

However unchristian it may seem, I do not even bear any ill feeling towards myself.

The rising and falling of the scales of pride and humility sustain the brooding mind as well as the alternations of desire and peace of the soul.