"Pleasant is the utterance of the Friend: Where is the soul who will taste its sweetness ..."

"O servants! Pleasant is the utterance of the Friend: Where is the soul who will taste its sweetness, and where is the ear that will hearken unto it? Well is it with him who, in this day, communeth with the Friend and in His path renounceth and forsaketh all save Him, that he may behold a new world and gain admittance to the everlasting paradise."

- Bahá'u'lláh, The Tabernacle of Unity, p. 70
THE BEGINNING OF ALL UTTERANCE IS THE PRAISE OF GOD

Qur'an

"The soul hath been created for the remembrance of the Friend; safeguard its purity."

"O servants! Lifeless is the body that is bereft of a soul, and withered the heart that is devoid of the remembrance of its Lord. Commune with the remembrance of the Friend and shun the enemy. Your enemy is such things as ye have acquired of your own inclination, to which ye have firmly clung, and whereby ye have sullied your souls. The soul hath been created for the remembrance of the Friend; safeguard its purity. The tongue hath been created to bear witness to God; pollute it not with the mention of the wayward."

-Bahá'u'lláh, The Tabernacle of Unity, p. 68
 THE BEGINNING OF ALL UTTERANCE IS THE PRAISE OF GOD




Miss Juliet Thompson

"Have ye thought Me heedless or that I was unaware?"

"O REBELLIOUS ONES! My forbearance hath emboldened you and My long-suffering hath made you negligent, in such wise that ye have spurred on the fiery charger of passion into perilous ways that lead unto destruction. Have ye thought Me heedless or that I was unaware?"

-Bahá'u'lláh, The Hidden Words of Bahá’u’lláh, No. 65 Persian

"Dispute not with any one concerning the things of this world and its affairs .."

"Beware lest ye contend with any one, nay, strive to make him aware of the truth with kindly manner and most convincing exhortation. If your hearer respond, he will have responded to his own behoof, and if not, turn ye away from him, and set your faces towards God’s sacred Court, the seat of resplendent holiness.

Dispute not with any one concerning the things of this world and its affairs, for God hath abandoned them to such as have set their affection upon them."

-Bahá’u’lláh, A Compilation on Scholarship, Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, section CXXVIII

" .. Help him to see and recognize the truth, without esteeming yourself to be, in the least, superior to him, or to be possessed of greater endowments."

"Show forbearance and benevolence and love to one another. Should any one among you be incapable of grasping a certain truth, or be striving to comprehend it, show forth, when conversing with him, a spirit of extreme kindliness and good-will. Help him to see and recognize the truth, without esteeming yourself to be, in the least, superior to him, or to be possessed of greater endowments."

-Bahá’u’lláh, A Compilation on Scholarship, Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, section V

"For how long will ye worship the idols of your evil passions?"

"Amongst the people is he whose learning hath made him proud, and who hath been debarred thereby from recognizing My Name, the Self-Subsisting; who, when he heareth the tread of sandals following behind him, waxeth greater in his own esteem than Nimrod. Say: O rejected one! Where now is his abode? By God, it is the nethermost fire. Say: O concourse of divines! Hear ye not the shrill voice of My Most Exalted Pen? See ye not this Sun that shineth in refulgent splendour above the All-Glorious Horizon? For how long will ye worship the idols of your evil passions? Forsake your vain imaginings, and turn yourselves unto God, your Everlasting Lord."

-Bahá’u’lláh, A Compilation on Scholarship, The Kitáb-i-Aqdas, paragraph 41

Paul Cezanne

"True learning ..."

"True learning is that which is conducive to the well-being of the world, not to pride and self-conceit, or to tyranny, violence and pillage."

-Bahá’u’lláh, A Compilation on Scholarship (From a Tablet, translated from the Persian) p.8

Edgar Degas