“Only the search for truth is valid, the desire for wisdom the motive. The method is assimilation, not study.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“To copy a virtue in another is more copying than it is virtue. Try to learn what that virtue is based upon.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“Sufis are not here to satisfy a demand. They exist to share what they have got. These two things are not always… — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“The person that you feel yourself to be, according to the Sufis, is a false person, which has no true reality.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“Not to be greedy is, paradoxically, the highest form of looking after one's true interests.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“If you seek a teacher, try to become a real student. If you want to be a student, try to find a… — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“It has truly been said that 'Humility is not so much a virtue as a necessity, in order to learn.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“Superior experience and knowledge will be made available to a man or woman in exact accordance with his worth, capacity and earning… — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
Man (and woman) has an infinite capacity for self-development. Equally, he has an infinite capacity for self-destruction. A human being may be… — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“Many a “learned” man is destroyed by ignorance and by the learning which is of no use to him’ (Hadrat Ahmed ibn… — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“Sufism is experiential. Capacities, even those for learning beyond a certain point, are provoked by Sufis, by one's own efforts and what… — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“Virtually all organisations known to you work largely by means of your greed. They attract you because... they appeal to your greed.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“To be a Sufi is to detach from fixed ideas and from preconceptions; and not to try to avoid what is your lot.” — Idries Shah Copy Share
Prescribing hard work for the soft, or easy work for the hardy, is generally nonsense. What is always needed in any aim is right… — Idries Shah Copy Share
A king who feared wasps once decreed that they were abolished. As it happened, they did him no harm. But he was eventually stung… — Idries Shah Copy Share
“Do not tell your secrets to everyone in this headquarters, Earth. We have surveyed it well. There was nobody to whom to entrust secrets.” — Idries Shah Copy Share
“Sufis are those who have expunged from their minds the human tendencies of envy and enmity.” — Idries Shah Copy Share
The human being, whether he realises it or not, is trusting someone or something every moment of the day. — Idries Shah Copy Share
“You may be able to get the bone down your throat But if it reaches your stomach it will tear your navel. (Gulistan)” — Idries Shah Copy Share
“People are always trying to understand. There is only one way to do that. It is to discover < + i + >why< +… — Idries Shah Copy Share
We view Sufism not as an ideology that molds people to the right way of belief or action, but as an art or science… — Idries Shah Copy Share
