Top 450 Idries Shah Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “One of the tragedies of modern times is that people have come to believe that something said by someone in the past, perhaps for illustrative or provocation purposes, actually represents that person’s beliefs at the time.”

— Idries Shah

52. “The sight of God in woman is the most perfect of all.” Ibn Arabi.”

— Idries Shah

53. “MAN: Kick him-he’ll forgive you. Flatter him-he may or may not see through you. But ignore him and he’ll hate you.”

— Idries Shah

54. “Advice is priceless: when it becomes interference it is preposterous.”

— Idries Shah

55. “Too much kindness towards the fox may mean doom for the rabbit.”

— Idries Shah

56. “As Ibn Arabi says: ‘Absolute existence is the source of all existence’.”

— Idries Shah

57. “Whatever goes into a salt-mine becomes salt.”

— Idries Shah

58. “The impatient man is his own enemy; he slams the door on his own progress.”

— Idries Shah

59. “People today are in danger of drowning in information; but, because they have been taught that information is useful, they are more willing to drown than they need be. If they could handle information, they would not have to drown at all.”

— Idries Shah

60. “An egocentric pessimist is a person who thinks he hasn’t changed, but that other people are behaving worse than before.”

— Idries Shah

61. “El proceso de aprender es el proceso de descubrir lo que realmente existe.”

— Idries Shah

62. “La paciencia es amarga, pero produce un dulce fruto.”

— Idries Shah

63. “Premature independence is the daughter of conceit.”

— Idries Shah

64. “Do not think that your magic ring will work if you are not yourself Solomon.”

— Idries Shah

65. “Muchos eruditos son destruidos por la ignorancia y por el conocimiento que no saben utilizar.”

— Idries Shah

66. “People used to play with toys. Now the toys play with them.”

— Idries Shah

67. “For every Pharoah there is a Moses.”

— Idries Shah

68. “When people have a hard task to do – one which stretches them – they become less concerned with trivial matters.”

— Idries Shah

69. “The union of the mind and intuition which brings about illumination, and the development which the Sufis seek, is based upon love.”

— Idries Shah

70. “The laziness of adolescence is a rehearsal for the incapacity of old age.”

— Idries Shah

71. “Anyone can see that an ass laden with books remains a donkey. A human being laden with the undigested results of a tussle with thoughts and books, however, still passes for wise.”

— Idries Shah

72. “Sufis aim to refine human consciousness. This is Sufi mysticism: not mystification or magic, but a specific Path.”

— Idries Shah

73. “Our objective is to achieve, by the understanding of the Origin, the Knowledge which comes through experience.”

— Idries Shah

74. “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

75. “Trying to force something is the best way to stop it happening.”

— Idries Shah

76. “The learned person who only talks will never Penetrate to the inner heart of humans.”

— Idries Shah

77. “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

78. “A man who believes the word of a donkey in preference to my word does not deserve to be lent anything.”

— Idries Shah

79. “La herencia y la cultura oscurecen las capacidades superiores de la gente.”

— Idries Shah

80. “When a belief becomes more than an instrument, you are lost. You remain lost until you learn what ‘belief’ is really for.”

— Idries Shah

81. “It is not important to have said a thing first, or best – or even most interestingly. What is important is to say it on the right occasion.”

— Idries Shah

82. “Many people who are in reality dead are walking in the streets; many who are in their graves are in reality alive.”

— Idries Shah

83. “Correct teaching brings out human excellence.”

— Idries Shah

84. “None should say: ‘I can trust’ or ‘I cannot trust’ until he is a master of the option, of trusting or not trusting.”

— Idries Shah

85. “Only the search for truth is valid, the desire for wisdom the motive. The method is assimilation, not study.”

— Idries Shah

86. “If your desire for ‘good’ is based on greed, it is not good, but greed.”

— Idries Shah

87. “Exercise power by means of kindness, and you may be causing more damage than you could by cruelty. Neither approach is correct.”

— Idries Shah

88. “It is not only a matter of not caring who knows – it is also a matter of knowing who cares.”

— Idries Shah

89. “A certain person may have, as you say, a wonderful presence; I do not know. What I do know is that he has a perfectly delightful absence.”

— Idries Shah

90. “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

91. “Sufism,” according to the Sufi, “is an adventure in living, necessary adventure.”

— Idries Shah

92. “There is one kind of man worse than a boastful man: a complaining one.”

— Idries Shah

93. “Anybody or anything may stand between you and knowledge if you are unfit for it.”

— Idries Shah

94. “The mine is always bigger than the gem.”

— Idries Shah

95. “Many things which are called ‘secrets’ are only things withheld from people until they can understand or effectively experience them.”

— Idries Shah

96. “It is the message, not the man, which is important to the Sufis.”

— Idries Shah

97. “Treat this world as I do, like a wayfarer; like a horseman who stops in the shade of a tree for a time, and then moves on.”

— Idries Shah

98. “The chicken had his wish, and was magically transformed into a fox. Then he found that he could not digest grain.”

— Idries Shah

99. “But one may say something and yet not be able to do it. Try, for instance, lifting yourself up by the bootstraps.”

— Idries Shah

100. “When the Higher Man does something worthy of admiration, it is an evidence of his Mastership, not the object of it.”

— Idries Shah