Idries Shah Quotes
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A certain person may have, as you say, a wonderful presence; I do not know. What I do know is that he has a perfectly delightful absence.
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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.
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When the ignorant have become numerous or powerful enough, they have been referred to by a special name. This names is 'the Wise'.
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Opinion is usually something which people have when they lack comprehensive information.
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People who speak or act in an ordinary fashion are most likely to be those who have been the recipients of higher experiences. But because they do not rage around, wild-eyed, people think that they are very ordinary folk and therefore not aware of anything unknown to the general run of man.
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Materialism, attachment to things of the world, includes pride. Many religious people suffer from pride: taking pleasure or even delight in being good, or religious.
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The laziness of adolescence is a rehearsal for the incapacity of old age.
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Knowledge is something which you can use. Belief is something which uses you.
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Scholars of the East and West have heroically consecrated their whole working lives to making available, by means of their own disciplines, Sufi literary and philosophical material to the world at large. In many cases they have faithfully recorded the Sufis' own reiteration that the Way of the Sufis cannot be understood by means of the intellect or by ordinary book learning.
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We view Sufism not as an ideology that molds people to the right way of belief or action, but as an art or science that can exert a beneficial influence on individuals and societies, in accordance with the needs of those individuals and societies ... Sufi study and development gives one capacities one did not have before.
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The sufis believe that they can experience something more complete.
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The Sufi is One who does not care when something is taken from him, but who does not cease to seek for what he has not.
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When the Higher Man does something worthy of admiration, it is an evidence of his Mastership, not the object of it.
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A man who believes the word of a donkey in preference to my word does not deserve to be lent anything.
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The proverb says that 'The answer to a fool is silence'. Observation, however, indicates that almost any other answer will have the same effect in the long run.
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Have you noticed how many people who walk in the shade curse the Sun?
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The word 'choice' is a fraud while people choose only what they have been taught to choose.
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Sometimes a pessimist is only an optimist with extra information.
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History is not usually what has happened. History is what some people have thought to be significant.
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The learned person who only talks will never Penetrate to the inner heart of humans.
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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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When people have a hard task to do - one which stretches them - they become less concerned with trivial matters.
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When the lion had eaten its fill, and the jackals had taken their share, the ants came along and finished up the meat from the bones of the haughty stag.
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When tomorrow comes, think tomorrow's thoughts.