Idries Shah Quotes
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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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Prescribing hard work for the soft, or easy work for the hardy, is generally nonsense. What is always needed in any aim is right effort, right time, right people, right materials.
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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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Have you noticed how many people who walk in the shade curse the Sun?
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The union of the mind and intuition which brings about illumination, and the development which the Sufis seek, is based upon love.
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If you want to make an ordinary man happy, or think that he is happy, give him money, power, flattery, gifts, honours. If you want to make a wise man happy - improve yourself!
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The Sufi way is through knowledge and practice, not through intellect and talk.
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Anybody or anything may stand between you and knowledge if you are unfit for it.
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From time to time ponder whether you are unconsciously saying: 'Truth is what I happen to be thinking at this moment.
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The stupidest man I ever met had a favourite saying. It was: 'What do you think I am, stupid, or something?
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Effort makes some great men famous. Even greater effort enables other great men to remain unknown.
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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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If you want to strengthen an enemy and make him exult - hate him.
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The Path is not to be found anywhere except in human service
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Knowledge is not gained, it is there all the time. It is the "veils" which have to be dissolved in the mind.
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There is a succession of experiences which together constitute the educational and developmental ripening of the learner, according to the Sufis. People who think that each gain is the goal itself will freeze at any such stage, and cannot learn through successive and superseding lessons.
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Dramatic. A well developed sense of the dramatic has values beyond what people usually imagine. One of these is to realise the limitations of a sense of the dramatic.
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A real secret is something which only one person knows.
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If you can turn a murderer into a mere thief, you are making progress.
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Learn to be as analytical about things of which you are credulous as you are of those which you criticise.
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When Fortune knocks, open the door,' they say. But why should one make fortune knock, by keeping the door shut?
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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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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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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.