Idries Shah Quotes - Page 6

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.

When humility is exercised, people begin to realise that they do not, as it were, exist at all.

It is axiomatic that the attempt to become a Sufi through a desire for personal power as normally understood will not succeed.

Sufis are those who have expunged from their minds the human tendencies of envy and enmity.

Show a man too many camels' bones,or show them to him too often,and he will not be able to recognize a camel when he comes across a live one.

The Way of the Sufis cannot be understood by means of the intellect or by ordinary book learning.

Study the assumptions behind your actions. Then study the assumptions behind your assumptions.

The institution of teachership is there for this reason, that the learner must learn how to learn.

Worry is a cloud which rains destruction.

The stupidest man I ever met had a favourite saying. It was: 'What do you think I am, stupid, or something?

Remedy
Your medicine is in you, and you do not observe it. Your ailment is from yourself, and you do not register it.

Hazrat Ali

When you realise the difference between the container and the content, you will have knowledge.

The colour of the water seems to be the colour of the glass into which it has been poured

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

HE is a Master who may teach without it being totally labelled teaching; HE is a student who can learn without being obsessed by learning.

Remember that greed includes greed for being not greedy.

Learning how to learn involves examining assumptions. Mulla Nasrudin tales very often fulfil this funcition.

If you seek small things to do, and do them well, great things will seek you, and demand to be performed.

Better to be safe than to be sorry' is a remark of value only when these are the actual alternatives.

If I knew what two and two were – I would say Four!