“Learning how to learn involves examining assumptions. Mulla Nasrudin tales very often fulfil this funcition.” — 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
“Laziness - The laziness of adolescence is a rehearsal for the incapacity of old age.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“Never follow any impulse to teach, however strong it might be. The command to teach is not felt as an impulsion.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
Study the assumptions behind your actions. Then study the assumptions behind your assumptions. — 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
“As swords were designed to kill They did well to make them tongue-shaped. (Anwar-i-Suhaili)” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“They say: 'Seek wisdom while you have the strength, or you may lose the strength without gaining wisdom.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“He who knows himself, knows his Lord' means, among other things, that self-deception prevents knowledge.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“if... says: 'Do not be greedy, be generous', you may inwardly interpret this in such a manner that you will develop a… — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“One of the basic Sufi needs is to enable people to see themselves as they really are.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“When humility is exercised, people begin to realise that they do not, as it were, exist at all.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“A loan is the scissors of friendship. A man's own tongue may cut his throat. The cage has no value without the… — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“The Sufis regard systems which treat everyone alike as mechanical and degenerate.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“Our objective is to achieve, by the understanding of the Origin, the Knowledge which comes through experience.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“A great deal of thought is only a substitute for the thoughts that the individual would really find useful at the time.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“There is no wisdom where there is no common sense: it cannot under those conditions find any expression.” — 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
“Assume that you are part-hypocrite and part heedless, and you will not be far wrong.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“If you are 'humble', it may help you in ordinary life. If you are not, you will get nowhere in higher things.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“Sufis hold that the superior experience and knowledge comes to a man or woman in exact accordance with his worth,capacity,and earning of… — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“Study institutions may become visible when the head is more emptied of imaginings.” — 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
“Scraps The scraps from the meal of the Emir are larger than the gifts of halwa from the merchant. Timur Fazil” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“He who is fortunately enlightened [the Sufi] Knows that sophistry is from the devil and love from Adam.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“Neither imagine that you are false, nor lash yourself, for both may be forms of self-indulgence.” — 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
“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
“As the Eastern saying, by the sage Hilali, has it, 'one person who understands is worth a hundred who merely obey a… — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“The question of divine knowledge is so deep that it is really known only to those who have it.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“Show a man too many camels' bones,or show them to him too often,and he will not be able to recognize a camel… — 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
“You have come a long way, and you do not know it. You have a long way to go, and you do… — 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
“...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
“Greed harms you: generosity helps you. This is why it has been said: 'Greed is the mother of incapacity'.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“With enough information, it is almost impossible "not" to predict people's action.” — 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
![“He who is fortunately enlightened [the Sufi] Knows that sophistry is from the devil and love from Adam.” quote by Idries Shah](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/dfe/idries-shah-450_love_he-who-is-fortunately-enlightened-the-su_1524590.jpg)
