Idries Shah Quotes and Sayings - Page 3
-
“When Fortune knocks, open the door,' they say. But why should one make fortune knock, by keeping the door shut?”
-- Idries Shah -
“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 -
“When the ignorant have become numerous or powerful enough, they have been referred to by a special name. This names is 'the Wise'.”
-- Idries Shah -
“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.”
-- Idries Shah -
“The Path is not to be found anywhere except in human service”
-- Idries Shah -
“He that is purified by love is pure; and he that is absorbed in the Beloved and hath abandoned all else is a Sufi.Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah.”
-- Idries Shah -
“If your desire for 'good' is based on greed, it is not good, but greed.”
-- Idries Shah -
“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 -
“The laziness of adolescence is a rehearsal for the incapacity of old age.”
-- Idries Shah -
“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!”
-- Idries Shah -
“A motto of the human race: Let me do as I like, and give me approval as well.”
-- Idries Shah -
“People used to play with toys. Now the toys play with them.”
-- Idries Shah -
“Sometimes a pessimist is only an optimist with extra information.”
-- Idries Shah -
“Effort makes some great men famous. Even greater effort enables other great men to remain unknown.”
-- Idries Shah -
“A real secret is something which only one person knows.”
-- Idries Shah -
“Banality is like boredom: bored people are boring people, people who think that things are banal are themselves banal. Interesting people can find something interesting in all things.”
-- 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 -
“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.”
-- 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 -
“The impatient man is his own enemy; he slams the door on his own progress.”
-- Idries Shah -
“If you want to strengthen an enemy and make him exult - hate him.”
-- Idries Shah -
“When the Higher Man does something worthy of admiration, it is an evidence of his Mastership, not the object of it.”
-- Idries Shah -
“The human being, whether he realises it or not, is trusting someone or something every moment of the day.”
-- Idries Shah -
“If the path has been laid down, why the successive appearance of different teachers? Why would anyone reinvent the wheel, if everything were as cosy and sequential as primitive longing so easily convinces us?”
-- Idries Shah -
“You are still adrift while you still think that a means is an end.”
-- Idries Shah -
“One can give or withhold in a manner far more effective, sophisticated, useful, which is quite invisible to people who think that giving or withholding is done by external assessment. If you seek some mark of favour or 'promotion', know that you are not ready for it. Progress comes through capacity to learn, and is irresistible. Nobody can stand between you and knowledge if you are fit for it.”
-- Idries Shah -
“If you are uninterested in what I say, there's an end to it. If you like what I say, please try to understand which previous influences have made you like it. If you like some of the things I say, and dislike others, you could try to understand why. If you dislike all I say, why not try to find out what formed your attitude?”
-- Idries Shah -
“Learn to be as analytical about things of which you are credulous as you are of those which you criticise.”
-- Idries Shah
