Idries Shah Quotes - Page 2

A man is deficient in understanding until he perceives that there is a whole cycle of evolution possible within himself: repeating endlessly, offering opportunities for personal development.

An old fool is worse than a young one: For the young may always grow wise. (Zohair)

among roses, be a rose, among thorns, be a thorn

At His door, what is the difference between Muslim and Christian, virtuous and guilty? At his door all are seekers and He the sought.

Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaWisdom: Something you can learn without knowing it.

Definitions from Mulla Do-Piaza.Poverty: The result of marriage.

Angels are the powers hidden in the faculties and organs of man

It is axiomatic that the attempt to become a Sufi through a desire for personal power as normally understood will not succeed.

Saying of the ProphetThe TongueA man slips with his tongue more than with his feet.

If you assume that it is there, you will generally not be far off the truth.

The Sufis have said: ‘The importance of something is in inverse proportion to its attractiveness.

Saadi: Be a true renouncer, (zahid) and [you can even] ware satin.

There is a Persian proverb: 'To test that which has been tested is ignorance.' To try to test something without the means of testing is even worse.

SOVEREIGNTYSovereignty is a wind of change. (Hariri)

Saying of the ProphetDesireDesire not the world, and God will love you. Desire not what others have, and they will love you.

The mine is always bigger than the gem.

To copy a virtue in another is more copying than it is virtue. Try to learn what that virtue is based upon.

Never follow any impulse to teach, however strong it might be. The command to teach is not felt as an impulsion.

Saying of the ProphetReflectionThe Faithful are mirrors, one to the other.

It is your duty to do your best. It is not, however, your birth-right to prevail.

When the Higher Man does something worthy of admiration, it is an evidence of his Mastership, not the object of it.

Satisfaction is a treasure which does not decay.Proverb

People change and needs change. So what was Sufism once is Sufism no more.

No surgeon can treat the wounds of the tongue.

It is as true as anything else which can be spoken to say that all knowledge is really available everywhere.

No effort makes a black crow into a white hawk.

Learn about hornets from those who have been stung by them.

Continuously, in commemoration of the FriendWe drank wine, even before the creation of the vine.

It is no accident that Sufis find that they can connect most constructively with people who are well integrated into the world, as well as having higher aims, and that those who adopt a sensible attitude towards society and life as generally known can usually absorb Sufi teachings very well indeed

It is a Sufi contention that truth is not discovered or maintained by the mere repetition of teachings. It can only be kept understood by the perpetual experience of it. And it is in the experience of truth that the Sufis have always reposed their trust. Sufism is therefore not 'Do as I say and not as I do', or even 'Do as I do', but 'Experience it and you will know'.

Humility is a teacher of itself. It is learnt by means of its practise.

Saying of the ProphetDeathDie before your death.

Sufis are those who have expunged from their minds the human tendencies of envy and enmity.

Enemies are often former or potential friends who have been denied - or think that they have been denied - something.

The person that you feel yourself to be, according to the Sufis, is a false person, which has no true reality.

Generosity is also marked by doing what one says one will do. Saadi teaches: ‘when the generous promise, they perform

Whoever has taught me one letter has made me his slave.

Things which are seemingly opposed may in fact be working together

Yes, the world is an illusion. But Truth is always being shown there.

Words have to die if humans are to live.

No colour comes after black.

Certain levels of human understanding cannot be attained, it is claimed, until the brain can work in more than one way.

Knowledge is not gained, it is there all the time. It is the "veils" which have to be dissolved in the mind.

To be obsessed by the idea of freedom, for instance, is itself a form of slavery. Such people are in the chains of the hope of freedom, and are therefore able to do little else than struggle with them.

One lie will keep out forty truths.

Your medicine is in you, and you do not observe it. Your ailment is from yourself, and you do not register it.

Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaIntellectual: One who knows no craft.

It is necessary to note," says Rumi, "that opposite things work together, even though nominally opposed" (Fihi Ma Fihi).

Advice is priceless: when it becomes interference it is preposterous.

The bowl is warmer than the soup.

When tomorrow comes, think tomorrow's thoughts.

Causes: As important a fact as any individual cause on earth is the vital incapacity of the human individual to distinguish between genuine cause and one which is foisted upon him by pressure, environment, propaganda, conditioning.If people had the sense they pretend to have, they would seek this fundamental distinction perceptible.Hardly anyone makes this effort. This is partly because it is an invisible but powerful part of their culture to teach that conditioned emotionality and ‘causes’ whose necessity, urgency or rightness is only conditioned into them, are necessarily, right.

Mediation - Before you learn how to meditate, you must unlearn what you think meditation might be.

Sufism," according to the Sufi, "is an adventure in living, necessary adventure.

But the Sufis work IN the world, and therefore WITH 'things of the world'.

Assume that you are part-hypocrite and part heedless, and you will not be far wrong.

When you are still fragmentated, lacking certainty — what difference does it make what your decisions are?

ServiceI will not serve God like a labourer, in expectation of my wages.Rabia el-Adawia.

Sufis hold that the superior experience and knowledge comes to a man or woman in exact accordance with his worth,capacity,and earning of it.

Only the search for truth is valid, the desire for wisdom the motive. The method is assimilation, not study.