Top 450 Idries Shah Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “Practise your knowledge, for knowledge without practice is a body without life.”

— Idries Shah

202. “No colour comes after black.”

— Idries Shah

203. “El Sufismo es la esencia de todas las religiones”.”

— Idries Shah

204. “El burro que te trajo a esta puerta debe ser desechado si quieres atravesarla”.”

— Idries Shah

205. “Well-meant techniques such as arbitrary self-mortification, are useless.”

— Idries Shah

206. “The hearts of the noble are the graves of confidences.”

— Idries Shah

207. “People talk about ‘service, effort, love, knowledge’. But with knowledge you know what love is, and what it is not.”

— Idries Shah

208. “The secret protects itself. It is found only in the spirit and practice of the Work.”

— Idries Shah

209. “Se ha visto mucho humo, y ha causado gran temor de fuego – incluso cuando no se ha producido fuego alguno.”

— Idries Shah

210. “La prisa procede del diablo.”

— Idries Shah

211. “Hariri says, in his Maqamat: ‘Safety is on the river’s BANK.”

— Idries Shah

212. “Never follow any impulse to teach, however strong it might be. The command to teach is not felt as an impulsion.”

— Idries Shah

213. “Dhun’nun el Egipcio: “Los Sufis son aquellos que han erradicado de sus mentes las tendencias humanas de envidia y antagonismo.”

— Idries Shah

214. “Deteriorated science is a cult, so is imitative or deteriorated Sufism.”

— Idries Shah

215. “Un perro amarillo es hermano del chacal.”

— Idries Shah

216. “Sufis deny the absolute reality of time, space and physical form. These things are both relative and local. They only appear to be absolute.”

— Idries Shah

217. “Eat what you desire, but dress like other people.”

— Idries Shah

218. “I will not serve God like a labourer, in expectation of my wages. Rabia.”

— Idries Shah

219. “The donkey which brought you to this door must be dismissed if you want to get through it’.”

— Idries Shah

220. “Words, they say, are the food of minds. But, like other foods, they can do little by themselves.”

— Idries Shah

221. “What the self-imagined mystic seeks only in his meditation is visible to the Sufi on every street corner and in every alleyway.”

— Idries Shah

222. “El Sufi debe ser capaz de alternar su pensamiento entre lo relativo y lo Absoluto, lo aproximado y lo Real.”

— Idries Shah

223. “Saadi’s dictum, in the Bostan: ‘The Path is not in the rosary, the prayer-mat and the robe.”

— Idries Shah

224. “People who cannot trust are themselves not trustworthy, and therefore cannot be entrusted with important things.”

— Idries Shah

225. “Saying of the Prophet. The Bequest: I have nothing to leave you except my family.”

— Idries Shah

226. “It has truly been said that ‘Humility is not so much a virtue as a necessity, in order to learn.”

— Idries Shah

227. “The function of a nutrient is to become transmuted, not to leave unaltered traces.”

— Idries Shah

228. “The totality of life cannot be understood, so runs Sufi teaching, if it is studied only through the methods which we use in everyday living.”

— Idries Shah

229. “When you are still fragmentated, lacking certainty – what difference does it make what your decisions are?”

— Idries Shah

230. “The oven is hot: make bread.”

— Idries Shah

231. “A man’s capacity is the same as his breadth of vision.”

— Idries Shah

232. “A Sufi is alive to the value of time, and is given, every moment, to what that moment demands.”

— Idries Shah

233. “The worst of sages is a visitor of princes; the best of princes is a visitor of sages.”

— Idries Shah

234. “Beggars and Workers IT IS RELATED of Ibn el-Arabi that people said to him: ‘Your circle is composed mainly of beggars, husbandmen and artisans. Can you not find people of intellect who will follow you, so that perhaps more authoritative notice might be taken of your teachings?’ He said: ‘The Day of Calamity will be infinitely.”

— Idries Shah

235. “Recognizing a ‘True Master’ is possible only when the postulant, man or woman, is what we call ‘sincere’.”

— Idries Shah

236. “There are as many paths to Truth as there are souls of men.”

— Idries Shah

237. “It is as true as anything else which can be spoken to say that all knowledge is really available everywhere.”

— Idries Shah

238. “Much smoke has been seen, and caused great fear of fire – even when no fire ensued.”

— Idries Shah

239. “Dios provee el alimento, los hombres proveen los cocineros.”

— Idries Shah

240. “The lightning said to the oak tree: ‘Stand aside, or take what is coming to you!”

— Idries Shah

241. “Miracles, to the Sufi, are not evidential, they are instrumental.”

— Idries Shah

242. “Those who can’t, try: those who can, don’t have to.”

— Idries Shah

243. “Learn about hornets from those who have been stung by them.”

— Idries Shah

244. “El color del agua parece ser del color del vaso dentro del cual ha sido vertida’.”

— Idries Shah

245. “Knowledge of yourself may involve, if we are learning at the present time, a knowledge of the way of thinking of your society and to realise that you are probably its product, and that this knowledge can be attained in fact by such anthropological and psychological observations made by the Sufis in the course of their teaching how to pursue new and more promising extra perspectives.”

— Idries Shah

246. “If it is dark enough, one candle is plenty.”

— Idries Shah

247. “Do not dwell upon whether you will put yourself into the hands of a teacher. You are always in his hands.”

— Idries Shah

248. “La historia no es generalmente lo que ha sucedido. La historia es lo que algunas personas consideraron significativo.”

— Idries Shah

249. “Things which are seemingly opposed may in fact be working together.”

— Idries Shah

250. “Great men are great until they know it. Saints are holy until they know it.”

— Idries Shah