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When people have a hard task to do - one which stretches them - they become less concerned with trivial matters.
Idries Shah -
Right time, right place, right people equals success. Wrong time, wrong place, wrong people equals most of the real human history.
Idries Shah
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A generous person may not have wisdom: but, unlike others, he has the means to gain it.
Idries Shah -
You need not wonder whether you should have an unreliable person as a friend. An unreliable person is nobody's friend.
Idries Shah -
A real secret is something which only one person knows.
Idries Shah -
The impatient man is his own enemy; he slams the door on his own progress.
Idries Shah -
People used to play with toys. Now the toys play with them.
Idries Shah -
Have you noticed how many people who walk in the shade curse the Sun?
Idries Shah
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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.
Idries Shah -
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.
Idries Shah -
When you realize the difference between the container and the content, you will have knowledge.
Idries Shah -
The colour of the water seems to be the colour of the glass into which it has been poured'.
Idries Shah -
Advice is priceless: when it becomes interference it is preposterous.
Idries Shah -
Trying to force something is the best way to stop it happening.
Idries Shah
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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.
Idries Shah -
Worry is a cloud which rains destruction.
Idries Shah -
The human being, whether he realises it or not, is trusting someone or something every moment of the day.
Idries Shah -
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.
Idries Shah -
The secret of Sufism is that it has no secret at all'.
Idries Shah -
It is not only a matter of not caring who knows - it is also a matter of knowing who cares.
Idries Shah
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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.
Idries Shah -
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.
Idries Shah -
MAN: Kick him-he'll forgive you. Flatter him-he may or may not see through you. But ignore him and he'll hate you
Idries Shah -
A motto of the human race: Let me do what I like, and give me approval as well.
Idries Shah