Quotes by Teachers - Page 11

What do I sing, and what does my tambourine sing?
Idries Shah
Inheritance and culture obscure people’s higher capacities.
Idries Shah
I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker.
Gwendolyn Brooks
The main problem is that most commentators are accustomed to thinking of spiritual schools as 'systems', which are more or less alike, and which depend upon dogma and ritual: and especially upon repetition and the application of continual and standardised pressures upon their followers.The Sufi way, except in degenerate forms which are not to be classified as Sufic, is entirely different from this.
Idries Shah
But one may say something and yet not be able to do it. Try, for instance, lifting yourself up by the bootstraps.
Idries Shah
Inner Knowledge -- You want to become wise in one lesson: First become a real human being.
Idries Shah
If we eliminate the word "writer", if we just go back to writing as an act of listening and naming what we hear, some of the rules dissappear. There is an organic shape, a form-coming-into-form that is inherent in the thing we are observing, listening to, and trying to put on the page. It has rules of its own that it will reveal to us if we listen with attention. Shape does not need to be imposed. Shape is a part of what we are listening to. When we just let ourselves write, we get it "right".
Julia Cameron
Not romantic," she disagreed. "To me it would be romantic if Antony properly fell on his sword and kicked the bucket and Cleopatra escaped and lived a lovely life sailing along the Nile without him and his big ideas ruining her kingdom.
Jack Gantos
Greed harms you: generosity helps you. This is why it has been said: 'Greed is the mother of incapacity'.
Idries Shah
The poem has a social effect of some kind whether or not the poet wills it to have. It has a kenetic force, it sets in motion...elements in the reader that would otherwise remain stagnant.
Denise Levertov
It is almost a cliche to speak of the professed atheist who cries out for help to God when he is in mortal danger. The profession of atheism is done by the conscious mind, but the subconscious still believes in God.
Serge Kahili King
I clamped down on the sick, hurt feeling inside that threatened to make me burst into tears. My eyes dried instantly. I was good at hiding tears. I should be; I'd had three years to get good at it.
P.C. Cast
Our objective is to achieve, by the understanding of the Origin, the Knowledge which comes through experience.
Idries Shah
A book, for the Sufis, is an instrument as much as it is something to give information.
Idries Shah
Saying of the ProphetUnderstandingSpeak to everyone in accordance with his degree of understanding.
Idries Shah
In the distorting mirror of your mind, an angel can seem to have a devil's face.
Idries Shah
Butterfly?" Will said. "Why Butterfly?" "I believe it's a term of great respect," Selethen said gravely. He was very obviously not laughing. Too obviously, Will thought. "It's all right for you," he said. "They called you 'Hawk.' Hawk is an excellent name. It's warlike and noble. But....Butterfly? Selethen nodded. "I agree that Hawk is an entirely suitable name. I assume it had to do with my courage and nobility of heart. Halt coughed and the Arridi lord looked at him, eyebrows raised. "I think it referred less to your heart and more to another part of your body," Halt said mildly. He tapped his finger meaningfully along the side of his nose. It was a gesture he'd always wanted an opportunity to use, and this one was to good to miss. Selethen sniffed and turned away, affecting not to notice.
John Flanagan
Whenever we put other things first, there is confusion.
Oswald Chambers
Satan takes occasion of the frailty of the bodily temple and says, 'Now you know you cannot do that; you are so infirm, you cannot concentrate your mind,' etc. Never allow bodily infirmities to hinder you obeying the commands of Jesus.
Oswald Chambers
The words of the bards come down the centuries to us, warm with living breath.
Pádraic Pearse
When we write from the inside out rather than the outside in, when we write about what most concerns us rather than about what we feel might sell, we often write so well and so persuasively that the market responds to our efforts.
Julia Cameron
Sufism is experiential
Idries Shah
Long gone was the cheery welcome of the seaside hotelier, replaced by a weary nostalgia for the good old days.
Alan Gibbons
The secret protects itself. It is found only in the spirit and practice of the Work.
Idries Shah
None should say: ‘I can trust,’ or ‘I cannot trust’ until he is master of the option, of trusting or not trusting.
Idries Shah
[I]mpermanence [is] the very thing that makes [life] vibrant, wonderful, and alive.
Steve Hagen
No matter what your age or your life path, whether making art is your career or your hobby or your dream, it is not too late or too egotistical or too selfish or too silly to work on your creativity.
Julia Cameron
Is that what love is all about? Needing them to come back to you when they're away? To come home and keep you safe?
Wally Lamb
Timid young artists, adding parental fears to their own, often give up their sunny dreams of artistic careers, settling into the twilight world of could-have-beens and regrets.
Julia Cameron
The sort of man who, throwing a stone upon the ground, would miss.
Idries Shah
Pray to catch the bus, then run as fast as you can.
Julia Cameron
Basic Principles:1. Creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy: pure creative energy.2. There is an underlying, in-dwelling creative force infusing all of life -- including ourselves.3. When we open ourselves to our creativity, we open ourselves to the creator's creativity within us and our lives.4. We are, ourselves, creations. And we, in turn, are meant to continue creativity by being creative ourselves.5. Creativity is God's gift to us. Using our creativity is our gift back to God.6. The refusal to be creative is self-will and is counter to our true nature.7. When we open ourselves to exploring our creativity, we open ourselves to God: good orderly direction.8. As we open our creative channel to the creator, many gentle but powerful changes are to be expected.9. It is safe to open ourselves up to greater and greater creativity.10. Our creative dreams and yearnings come from a divine source. As we move toward our dreams, we move toward our divinity.
Julia Cameron
Life: sometimes the man on the saddle, sometimes the saddle on the man.
Idries Shah
If you want your prayers answered, get up off your knees and do something about them.
Wally Lamb
How to get the best of it all? One must conquer, achieve, get to the top; one must know the end to be convinced that one can win the end - to know there's no dream that mustn't be dared. . . Is this the summit, crowning the day? How cool and quiet! We're not exultant; but delighted, joyful; soberly astonished. . . Have we vanquished an enemy? None but ourselves. Have we gained success? That word means nothing here. Have we won a kingdom? No. . . and yes. We have achieved an ultimate satisfaction. . . fulfilled a destiny. . . To struggle and to understand - never this last without the other; such is the law. . .
George Mallory
It has truly been said that 'Humility is not so much a virtue as a necessity, in order to learn.
Idries Shah
Give me strength, not to be better than my enemies, but to defeat my greatest enemy, the doubts within myself. Give me strength for a straight back and clear eyes, so when life fades, as the setting sun, my spirit may come to you without shame.
P.C. Cast
If the father cannot, the son will finish the task.
Idries Shah
It is only through silent awareness that our physical and mental nature can change. This change is completely spontaneous. If we make an effort to change we do no more than shift our attention from one level, from one thing, to another. We remain in a vicious circle. This only transfers energy from one point to another. It still leaves us oscillating between suffering and pleasure, each leading inevitably back to the other. Only living stillness, stillness without someone trying to be still, is capable of undoing the conditioning our biologoical, emotional and psychological nature has undergone. There is no controller, no selector, no personality making choices. In choiceless living the situation is given the freedom to unfold. You do not grasp one aspect over another for there is nobody to grasp. When you understand something and live it without being stuck to the formulation, what you have understood dissolves in your openness. In this silence change takes place of its own accord, the problem is resolved and duality ends. You are left in your glory where no one has understood and nothing has been understood.
Jean Klein
There is no Zionism except the rescue of Jews.
Golda Meir
Tragedy of the Commons: while each person can agree that all would benefit from common restraint, the incentives of the individuals are arrayed against that outcome.
Clay Shirky
It's an insidious idea, this notion that there is life after death. The promise of a reward in the afterlife has been used as an excuse to deny help to the poor, helpless and oppressed; to explain away human misery rather than deal with it. It is an idea that is used to encourage young men and women to kill themselves, and others, so that they can become martyrs. It allows victims of injustice to be told not to worry because justice will be done in the afterlife. It depresses me to think that so many people on the planet live their lives with this notion. Can we truly fulfill our potential as a species as long as we hold on to, and encourage, the perpetuation of the lie of life after death?
Alom Shaha
Christian scholars often say that Sufi theories are close to those of Christianity. Many Moslems maintain that they are essentially derived from Islam. The resemblance of many Sufi ideas to those of several religious and esoteric systems are sometimes taken as evidence of derivation. The Islamic interpretation is that religion is of one origin, differences being due to local or historical causes.
Idries Shah
What if all I'd ever known was how it had been for the past three years - me being an unwanted outsider in my own family?I might have turned out like Aphrodite, and I might still be letting my parents control me because I was hoping desperately that I would be good enough, make them proud, so that some day they would really love me.
P.C. Cast
The essential conditions of everything you do must be choice love passion.
Nadia Boulanger
When I act tough they listen politely till the spasm passes. They know.
Frank McCourt
Pick up a bee from kindness, and learn the limitations of kindness.
Idries Shah
Lately, I don't talk much except to Mel. I make an exception because he has a dog.
Eileen Granfors
MAGHRIBI: Learning is in activity. Learning through words alone is minor activity.
Idries Shah
Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaCommunity: Irrationals unified by hope of the impossible.
Idries Shah
Belief may serve as a useful stopgap measure in the absence of actual experience, but once you see … [it] becomes unnecessary.
Steve Hagen
Becky Renee Apple - can you believe her mom named her that and then had all of her sweaters monogramed with 'BRA'?
P.C. Cast
So maybe that’s what love means. Having the capacity to forgive the one who wronged you, no matter how deep the hurt was.
Wally Lamb
If you have good friends, no matter how much life is sucking , they can make you laugh.
P.C. Cast
A story once went the rounds of Israel to the effect that Ben-Gurion described me as 'the only man' in his cabinet. What amused me about is that he (or whoever invented the story) thought that this was the greatest compliment that could be paid to a woman. I very much doubt that any man would have been flattered if I had said about him that he was the only woman in the government!
Golda Meir
You will always have doubts, but only discover them at a useful time for your weakness to point them out.
Idries Shah
The Sufi must be able to alternate his thought between the relative and the Absolute, the approximate and the Real.
Idries Shah
It is one thing to be gifted and quite another thing to be worthy of one's own gift.
Nadia Boulanger
Southern trees bear strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.Pastoral scene of the gallant south,The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth, Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh, Then the sudden smell of burning flesh. Here is the fruit for the crows to pluck, For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck, For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,Here is a strange and bitter crop.
Abel Meeropol
I want you to take a sleeve of Thin Mints and line them up on the edge of the kitchen counter and when I'm hungry I can just bend over and sweep a cookie into my mouth like I'm scoring a goal in hockey.
Jack Gantos