Idries Shah quotes:

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Man (and woman) has an infinite capacity for self-development. Equally, he has an infinite capacity for self-destruction. A human being may be clinically alive and yet, despite all appearances, spiritually dead.
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.
Enlightenment must come little by little - otherwise it would overwhelm.
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.
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.
Mediation - Before you learn how to meditate, you must unlearn what you think meditation might be.
You must improve yourself on a higher level if you are to be able to help people, and not just weep over them.
A man who believes the word of a donkey in preference to my word does not deserve to be lent anything.
The Path is not to be found anywhere except in human service
It is axiomatic that the attempt to become a Sufi through a desire for personal power as normally understood will not succeed.
If you do not understand, you cannot love. You can only imagine that you love.
If you give what can be taken, you are not really giving. Take what you are given, not what you want to be given. Give what cannot be taken.
Teach honesty by all means - you do know what it is, don't you?
But one may say something and yet not be able to do it. Try, for instance, lifting yourself up by the bootstraps.
A man is deficient in understanding until he perceives that there is a whole cycle of evolution possible within himself: repeating endlessly, offering opportunities for personal development.
Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaA fool: A man trying to be honest with the dishonest.
If you want to strengthen an enemy and make him exult - hate him.
Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaTruthful man:He who is, secretly, regarded by everyone as an enemy.
Sufi secrets are perceived, not understood by words.
It is not only a matter of not caring who knows - it is also a matter of knowing who cares.
A donkey eats a melon, it remains a donkey
A generous person may not have wisdom: but, unlike others, he has the means to gain it.
None should say: 'I can trust' or 'I cannot trust' until he is a master of the option, of trusting or not trusting.
ANDAKI: EFFORT IS NOT EFFORT WITHOUT ZAMAN, MAKAN, IKHWAN (RIGHT TIME, RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT PEOPLE).
To bind one free man with love is better than to release a thousand slaves.
It is not 'Have I got a chance?' It is more often: 'Have I seen my chance?
No duty is ignoble. What can be ignoble is the sight of people trying not to be ignoble.
The sight of God in woman is the most perfect of all." Ibn Arabi.
Deep in the sea are riches beyond compare. But if you seek safety, it is on the shore.
An old fool is worse than a young one: For the young may always grow wise. (Zohair)
You may have forgotten the Way: But those who came beforeDid not forget you.Saying of Master Bahaudin Naqshband of Bokhara
Opportunity's precious, and time is a sword.
Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaDrugs: Source of the mystical experience of the ignorant.
Learn about hornets from those who have been stung by them.
Saying of the ProphetUnderstandingSpeak to everyone in accordance with his degree of understanding.
Saying of the ProphetStruggleThe holy warrior is he who struggles with himself.
Saying of the ProphetInk and BloodThe ink of the learned is holier than the blood of the martyr.
Saying of the ProphetEnvyEnvy devours good deeds, as a fire devours fuel.
Patience is a garment which has never worn out.
People who cannot trust are themselves not trustworthy, and therefore cannot be entrusted with important things.
Question 3: Why should a person study Sufism?Answer: Because he was created to study it; it is his next step.
Saying of the ProphetHumilityHumility and courtesy are themselves a part of piety.
Saying of the ProphetSleepSleep is the brother of death.
Saying of the ProphetDeathDie before your death.
In the realm of Greater Understanding, the workshop is dismantled after the work is finished.
What you are seeking in your retreat, I see clearly in every road and alleyway.
DeathIf he is a good man, death will be a release;If he is a bad one, it will release others from him.
Patience is the food of understanding.
A Sufi is alive to the value of time, and is given, every moment, to what that moment demands.
Make mankind your dwelling place.
They have fixed our nutrition and arranged our life-span. More than this, and ahead of this, efforts will not be productive.
But the world itself, as well as special attitudes, properly understood, constitute the Sufi school.
What you have to learn is how to find the unworldly in everything.
Trying to force something is the best way to stop it from happening.
if... says: 'Do not be greedy, be generous', you may inwardly interpret this in such a manner that you will develop a greed for generosity
Progress comes through capacity to learn, and is irresistible.
Remember that greed includes greed for being not greedy.
HE is a Master who may teach without it being totally labelled teaching; HE is a student who can learn without being obsessed by learning.
But the Sufis work IN the world, and therefore WITH 'things of the world'.
it was being written in the East that 'Sufism was formerly a reality without a name: now it is a name without a reality'.
Sufis are not here to satisfy a demand. They exist to share what they have got. These two things are not always the same.
When people believe that the form is more important than the Truth, they will not find truth, but will stay with form.
Greed harms you: generosity helps you. This is why it has been said: 'Greed is the mother of incapacity'.
One of the great Sufis said: 'A saint is a saint unless he knows that he is one.
...most systems end up by making imagined humility into a form of vanity, so they end up with vanity just the same.
Virtually all organisations known to you work largely by means of your greed. They attract you because... they appeal to your greed.
The automatism of man is overcome, in the words of Dhun'Nun, by aiming for 'being as you were, where you were, before you were'.
There is a saying that, according to what a person's mentality is, even an angel may seem to him to have a devil's face.
You can perceive a person's aspiration if it is genuine, because this creates a change in the emanations from such a person.
...action is in fact knowledge in operation. Right action stems from right knowledge. Right knowledge is acquired through the teacher.
They say: 'Seek wisdom while you have the strength, or you may lose the strength without gaining wisdom.
When humility is exercised, people begin to realise that they do not, as it were, exist at all.
There can be no spirituality, according to the Sufi masters, without psychology, psychological insight and sociological balance.
Why did I do such-and-such a thing?' is all very well. But what about 'How otherwise could I have done it?
It has truly been said that 'Humility is not so much a virtue as a necessity, in order to learn.
The person that you feel yourself to be, according to the Sufis, is a false person, which has no true reality.
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.
Show me a person who really knows what 'good' is, and I will show you that he almost never uses the word.
Only the search for truth is valid, the desire for wisdom the motive. The method is assimilation, not study.
Sufis are those who have expunged from their minds the human tendencies of envy and enmity.
The secret of Sufism is that it has no secret at all'.
The Sufis,' runs the saying, 'understand with their hearts what the most learned scholars cannot understand with their minds
If you are 'humble', it may help you in ordinary life. If you are not, you will get nowhere in higher things.
The Way of the Sufis cannot be understood by means of the intellect or by ordinary book learning.
Words have to die if humans are to live.
If you seek small things to do, and do them well, great things will seek you, and demand to be performed.
Do not try to be humble: learn humility.
To copy a virtue in another is more copying than it is virtue. Try to learn what that virtue is based upon.
Not to be greedy is, paradoxically, the highest form of looking after one's true interests.
No practice exists in isolation.
If your desire for 'good' is based on greed, it is not good, but greed.
Exercise power by means of kindness, and you may be causing more damage than you could by cruelty. Neither approach is correct.
When a belief becomes more than an instrument, you are lost. You remain lost until you learn what 'belief' is really for.
If you cannot laugh frequently and genuinely, you have no soul.
If you seek a teacher, try to become a real student. If you want to be a student, try to find a real teacher.
Sufis hold that the superior experience and knowledge comes to a man or woman in exact accordance with his worth,capacity,and earning of it.
Sufism is transmitted by means of the human exemplar, the teacher.
Worry is a cloud which rains destruction.
Laziness - The laziness of adolescence is a rehearsal for the incapacity of old age.
There is no wisdom where there is no common sense: it cannot under those conditions find any expression.
Inner Knowledge -- You want to become wise in one lesson: First become a real human being.
You can learn more in half an hour's direct contact with a source of knowledge (no matter the apparent reason for the contact or the subject of the transaction) than you can in years of formal effort.
Sufism is experiential. Capacities, even those for learning beyond a certain point, are provoked by Sufis, by one's own efforts and what results from them, and by an element of what is referred to by Sufis as the Divine.
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.
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.
The laziness of adolescence is a rehearsal for the incapacity of old age.
Saying of the ProphetObligation to LearnThe pursuit of knowledge is obligatory on every Muslim.
Saying of the ProphetTHE PEOPLEIt is the people who are God's family.(Muhammad the Prophet)
Saying of the ProphetTruthSpeaking the truth to the unjust is the best of holy wars.
Saying of the Prophet.Lies, promises, trustHe is not of mine who lies, breaks a promise or fails in his trust.
Saying of the ProphetSome behaviourI am like a man who has lighted a fire, and all the creeping things have rushed to burn themselves in it.
Saying of the ProphetHelping othersI order you to assist any oppressed person, whether he is a Muslim or not.
Saying of the ProphetMonkishnessNo monkery in Islam.
Saying of the ProphetThe BequestI have nothing to leave you except my family.
Teaching:One hour's teaching is better than a whole night of prayer.Saying of the Prophet
Saying of the ProphetThe TongueA man slips with his tongue more than with his feet.
Saying of the ProphetThe JudgeA man appointed to be a judge has been killed without a knife.
Saying of the ProphetFoodNobody has eaten better food than that won by his own labour.
Saying of the ProphetPracticeWho are the learned? Those who put into practice what they know.
Saying of the ProphetDesireDesire not the world, and God will love you. Desire not what others have, and they will love you.

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