Build in yourself a Kaaba sacrosanct

From being and non-being’s whirlpool free

Yourself; in this world of contingency

Build in yourself a Kaaba sacrosanct

Like Abraham’s home of eternity.

~ Allama Iqbal (from Payam-I-Mashriq)

The Ideal of Imagination

It is idle to seek logical truth in poetry.  The ideal of imagination is beauty, not truth.  Do not then try to show a poet's greatness by quoting passages from his works which, in your opinion, embody scientific truth.

~ Allama Iqbal (from Stray Reflections)

I am born...

I am born in the world as a new sun,

I have not learned the ways and fashions of the sky:

Not yet have the stars  fled before my splendor,

Not yet is my quicksilver astir;

Untouched is the sea by my dancing rays,

Untouched are the mountains by my crimson hue.

The eye of existence is not familiar with me;

I rise trembling, afraid to show myself.

~ Allama Iqbal (from Secrets of the Self)

A diseased social organism...

A diseased social organism sometimes sets up within itself forces which have a tendency to preserve the health of the organism - e.g., the birth of a great personality which may revitalise the dying organism by the revelation of a new ideal.

~ Allama Iqbal (from Stray Reflections)

He is one

He in one
Above all ritual
Above all dogma
Above all custom
And only where
These paths cease
Does true faith begin.

~ Ghalib
 (from Ghalib in Translation, O.P. Kejariwal)

Man is a Creative Activity

"When attracted by the forces around him, man has the power to shape and direct them; when thwarted by them, he has the capacity to build a much vaster world in the depths of his own inner being, wherein he discovers sources of infinite joy and inspiration.  Hard his lot and frail his being, like a rose-leaf, yet no form of reality is so powerful, so inspiring, and so beautiful as the spirit of man!  Thus in his inmost being man, as conceived by the Quran, is a creative activity, an ascending spirit who, in his onward march, rises from one state of being to another."

Allama Iqbal (from The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam)

The Pangs of Love

Who indeed

Can control

The pangs of love?

O Ghalib 

It's a fire

You cannot kindle

And one which

You cannot extinguish

At will. 

~ Ghalib (from Ghalib in Translation, Translator O.P. Kejariwal)