“To be a Sufi is to detach from fixed ideas and from preconceptions; and not to try to avoid what is your… — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“Do not tell your secrets to everyone in this headquarters, Earth. We have surveyed it well. There was nobody to whom to… — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“Sufis are those who have expunged from their minds the human tendencies of envy and enmity.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“Yes, the world is an illusion. But Truth is always being shown there.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“You may be able to get the bone down your throat But if it reaches your stomach it will tear your navel.… — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
We view Sufism not as an ideology that molds people to the right way of belief or action, but as an art… — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“Self-mortification, far from producing liberation from material things, is far more likely to cause either an unhinged mind, delusions or a masochistic… — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“It is axiomatic that the attempt to become a Sufi through a desire for personal power as normally understood will not succeed.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“There is a saying that, according to what a person's mentality is, even an angel may seem to him to have a… — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“Why did I do such-and-such a thing?' is all very well. But what about 'How otherwise could I have done it?” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“Show me a person who really knows what 'good' is, and I will show you that he almost never uses the word.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“When prayer, rituals and ascetic life are just a means of self-indulgence, they are harmful rather than beneficial.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“Forms have changed through the centuries in obedience to the external world to which all forms belong.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“Study institutions may become visible when the head is more emptied of imaginings.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“Salute to the Thief. Junaid of Baghdad was passing the scene of a public hanging, where a thief was on the scaffold.… — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“If you are penniless you will have a thousand dreams. Get even a single piece of money, however, and you will have… — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“It is a Sufi contention that truth is not discovered or maintained by the mere repetition of teachings. It can only be… — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“Presence and Absence A certain person may have, as you say, a wonderful presence: I do not know. What I do know… — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“Inner Knowledge -- You want to become wise in one lesson: First become a real human being.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“The Sufi teacher’s mission is to be in the service of those who can learn.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“Before the antidote arrives from Iraq The man with snake-bite will be dead.” — 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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
“Sufis are those who have expunged from their minds the human tendencies of envy and enmity.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“Yes, the world is an illusion. But Truth is always being shown there.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
The human being, whether he realises it or not, is trusting someone or something every moment of the day. — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
