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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.
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You need not wonder whether you should have an unreliable person as a friend. An unreliable person is nobody's friend.
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A real secret is something which only one person knows.
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When people have a hard task to do - one which stretches them - they become less concerned with trivial matters.
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When prayer, rituals and ascetic life are just a means of self-indulgence, they are harmful rather than beneficial. This is quite obvious to people nowadays, when it is widely recognised that fixations are not the same as valuable and laudable observances. One should not pray if that prayer is vanity; rituals are wrong when they provide lower satisfactions, like emotional stimulus instead of enlightenment; he or she should not be an ascetic who is only enjoying it.
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A generous person may not have wisdom: but, unlike others, he has the means to gain it.
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Have you noticed how many people who walk in the shade curse the Sun?
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When you realize the difference between the container and the content, you will have knowledge.
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The impatient man is his own enemy; he slams the door on his own progress.
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Anyone can see that an ass laden with books remains a donkey. A human being laden with the undigested results of a tussle with thoughts and books, however, still passes for wise.
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People used to play with toys. Now the toys play with them.
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Talking about straws and camels' backs is just one way of approaching things. If you have enough camels, no backs need be broken.
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The colour of the water seems to be the colour of the glass into which it has been poured'.
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Trying to force something is the best way to stop it happening.
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Advice is priceless: when it becomes interference it is preposterous.
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Worry is a cloud which rains destruction.
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The human being, whether he realises it or not, is trusting someone or something every moment of the day.
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The secret of Sufism is that it has no secret at all'.
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It is not only a matter of not caring who knows - it is also a matter of knowing who cares.
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From imperial, economic and ideological causes, many cultures are the inheritors, and hence the prisoners, of attitudes of scorn and disdain for other faiths – outlooks which are not ennobling to anyone.
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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.
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Exercise power by means of kindness, and you may be causing more damage than you could by cruelty. Neither approach is correct.
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A motto of the human race: Let me do what I like, and give me approval as well.
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It is not important to have said a thing first, or best - or even most interestingly. What is important is to say it on the right occasion.