“Before the antidote arrives from Iraq The man with snake-bite will be dead.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“The real generosity is when a man does something generous when nobody knows about it.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“...most systems end up by making imagined humility into a form of vanity, so they end up with vanity just the same.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
The Sufi is One who does not care when something is taken from him, but who does not cease to seek for… — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“Greed harms you: generosity helps you. This is why it has been said: 'Greed is the mother of incapacity'.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“Feeling important is a vice, not a virtue, however concealed as participation in something noble.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“Three things cannot be retrieved: The arrow once sped from the bow The word spoken in haste The missed opportunity. Ali, the… — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“People who have fallacious objectives are like the barren soil. The flowers grow from soil which is composed of the right objectives.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“Generosity is also marked by doing what one says one will do. Saadi teaches: ‘when the generous promise, they perform” — 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
“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
Dramatic. A well developed sense of the dramatic has values beyond what people usually imagine. One of these is to realise the… — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“Stages First I thought that a Teacher must be right in all things. Then I imagined that my teacher was wrong in… — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“You can learn more in half an hour's direct contact with a source of knowledge (no matter the apparent reason for the… — 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
“Wisdom Sufian said: 'The wisdom which is invisible but which sustains is a hundred times better than the appearance of wisdom, for… — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“Three Things Three things cannot be retrieved: The arrow once sped from the bow The word spoken in haste The missed opportunity.… — 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
“The Sufi way is through knowledge and practice, not through intellect and talk. As Prince Dara Shikoh says, in a Persian poem:… — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“The Seeking of the Master. Musa Najib was asked why he charged a fee from those who came to his sessions; and… — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“Counsels of Bahaudin You want to be filled. But something which is full has first to be emptied. Empty yourself so that… — 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
“Yes, the world is an illusion. But Truth is always being shown there.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“Virtually all organisations known to you work largely by means of your greed.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“The phenomenal is the channel to the Truth. Al mujazu qantarat al Haqiqa.” — 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
