Top 450 Idries Shah Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “Charity has been made into a great virtue only because of the low level of human decency.”

— Idries Shah

302. “A stolen kiss is not easily returned.”

— Idries Shah

303. “At His door, what is the difference between Moslem and Christian, virtuous and guilty? At his door all are seekers and He the sought.”

— Idries Shah

304. “He is the completed Man who, from his completeness, performs, with his Mastership, the work of a slave.”

— Idries Shah

305. “You cannot learn more until you can learn more.”

— Idries Shah

306. “If you really want to learn, do not be surprised if someone tries to teach you. And do not lightly reject the method.”

— Idries Shah

307. “Fettered feet in the presence of friends is better than living in a garden with strangers.”

— Idries Shah

308. “The sort of man who, throwing a stone upon the ground, would miss.”

— Idries Shah

309. “You make me a sinner if you stop me giving you hospitality.”

— Idries Shah

310. “Sufismo es aquello que consigue llevar el Conocimiento Superior al hombre.”

— Idries Shah

311. “MAGHRIBI: Learning is in activity. Learning through words alone is minor activity.”

— Idries Shah

312. “Hit your hand on a stone and expect it to hurt.”

— Idries Shah

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

— Idries Shah

314. “Take the wheat, not the measure in which it is contained.”

— Idries Shah

315. “One should not pray if that prayer is vanity.”

— Idries Shah

316. “There is something in man which can detect real love. We rub it out, or muffle it, by substitute-love.”

— Idries Shah

317. “There is a saying that, according to what a person’s mentality is, even an angel may seem to him to have a devil’s face.”

— Idries Shah

318. “Sufism is the essence of all religions.”

— Idries Shah

319. “Most people, whatever their opinions and protestations, do not want to learn.”

— Idries Shah

320. “From the beginning, from the age of Adam to the time of kingship: from the powerful, pardon: from the poor, sins.”

— Idries Shah

321. “Debating whether one trusts or not is a sign that one does not want to trust at all, and therefore is still incapable of it.”

— Idries Shah

322. “If you are covetous, you are a prisoner: If you are greedy, you will never be filled.”

— Idries Shah

323. “Generosity is also marked by doing what one says one will do.”

— Idries Shah

324. “What you are seeking in your retreat, I see clearly in every road and alleyway.”

— Idries Shah

325. “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

326. “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

327. “When you get a principle on which everyone is agreed, you get the beginning of complacency and deterioration.”

— Idries Shah

328. “Haz de la humanidad tu morada.”

— Idries Shah

329. “You call me an unbeliever. I shall therefore call you a True Believer since a lie is best met with one of similar magnitude.”

— Idries Shah

330. “And Rumi tells us, ‘Soul receives from soul that knowledge, therefore not by book nor from tongue’.”

— Idries Shah

331. “People change and needs change. So what was Sufism once is Sufism no more.”

— Idries Shah

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

— Idries Shah

333. “They have fixed our nutrition and arranged our life-span. More than this, and ahead of this, efforts will not be productive.”

— Idries Shah

334. “La gente habla de “servicio, esfuerzo, amor, conocimiento”. Pero con el conocimiento sabes lo que es amor, y lo que no lo es.”

— Idries Shah

335. “Hay tantos caminos hacia la verdad como almas humanas.”

— Idries Shah

336. “Exaggeration is a standard peculiarity of man. To deprecate is often a form of exaggeration which people do not notice, because it appears to be its opposite.”

— Idries Shah

337. “People generally deal with situations by means of assumptions.”

— Idries Shah

338. “A Sufi is one who is not bound by anything nor does he bind anything.”

— Idries Shah

339. “A book, for the Sufis, is an instrument as much as it is something to give information.”

— Idries Shah

340. “One day we will all wear a garment which has no pockets...”

— Idries Shah

341. “In the realm of Greater Understanding, the workshop is dismantled after the work is finished.”

— Idries Shah

342. “The definition of the word ‘finished’ is: ‘This word means finished.”

— Idries Shah

343. “When the mind is full of established biases, it will not be able to graft Sufism on top of them.”

— Idries Shah

344. “People carry on whole conversations in proverbs. But they are not LIVING the proverbs.”

— Idries Shah

345. “The teaching must, of course, work with the best part of the individual, must be directed to his or her real capacity.”

— Idries Shah

346. “What you have to learn is how to find the unworldly in everything.”

— Idries Shah

347. “What is known to be tyranny to the superior man may appear to be justice to the ordinary one.”

— Idries Shah

348. “If you will not reprove yourself,’ Saadi says, ’you will not welcome reproof from another.”

— Idries Shah

349. “To bind one free man with love is better than to release a thousand slaves.”

— Idries Shah

350. “Sufism is the doing in this lifetime what any fool will be doing in then thousand years’ time.”

— Idries Shah