Idries Shah Quotes

Sufism is, in operation, pragmatic.

To drown in treacle is just as unpleasant as to drown in mud.People today are in danger of drowning in information; but because they have been taught information is useful, they are more willing to drown than they need be.If they could handle information, they would not have to drown at all.The lightning said to the oak tree: 'Stand aside, or take what is coming to you!

SOVEREIGNTYSovereignty is a wind of change. (Hariri)

Any society which enjoins its members to adhere to both of these (politeness and truth) is a fraud.

We and all our existences are non-entities. Thou art the absolute being whose appearance is transitory.

Sufi Teachers are not, as you might hope, people who make you feel peace and harmony.

He who sleeps on the Road will lose either his hat or his head.

Rumi speaks of people who rely upon the written word as sometimes being no more than donkeys laden with books.

My father used to tell me that stories offer the listener a chance to escape but, more importantly, he said, they provide people with a chance to maximize their minds. Suspend ordinary constraints, allow the imagination to be freed, and we are charged with the capability of heighetned thought.Learn to use your eyes as if they are your ears, he said, and you become connected with the ancient heritage of man, a dream world for the waking mind.

Sufis are not here to satisfy a demand. They exist to share what they have got. These two things are not always the same.

Fettered feet in the presence of friends is better than living in a garden with strangers.

Hariri says, in his Maqamat: ‘Safety is on the river’s BANK.

The existence of relative truth does not prove the non-existence of universal truth.

If you will not reprove yourself,’ Saadi says, ‘you will not welcome reproof from another.

Imagination blocks you like a bolt on a door. Burn that bar. (Rumi)

Humility cannot be taught by propaganda, though slavery can. Shouting for humility is a form of arrogance. One of my most abiding recollections is of a priest at a religious occasion once roaring, in the most threatening way imaginable: t‘O our Lord God, we most humbly pray…!’Real humility is not always the same as apparent humility. Remember that fighting against self-conceit is still fighting: and that it will tend to suppress it temporarily. It does not cure anything.Remember, too, that humility itself does not bring an automatic reward: it is a means to an end. It enables a person to operate in a certain manner.