Idries Shah, Seeker After Truth Quotes

Worry is a cloud which rains destruction.

The Path is not to be found anywhere except in human service

Great men are great until they know it. Saints are holy until they know it.

But the minimum human duty is to serve others: it is no great attainment.

I longed to teach, but I had to wait until the desire had left me before I could really do so.

When there is a true or useful thing, there is sure to be a counterfeit.

Sufism is education, in that it has a body of knowledge which it transmits to those who have not got it.

It is experience which teaches, not controversy based on supposed logic and assumptions of what is likely to be true.

Whatever goes into a salt-mine becomes salt.

Like calls to like, truth to truth and deceit to deceit.

Things which are seemingly opposed may in fact be working together

A Sufi is one who is not bound by anything nor does he bind anything

Q: How can I help myself?A: By remembering the proverb: ‘The Path is not to be found anywhere except in human service’, from Saadi.

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

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

But the Sufis work IN the world, and therefore WITH 'things of the world'.

The Sufis have said: ‘The importance of something is in inverse proportion to its attractiveness.

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

Ignorance is the Mother of Opposition

Q: What is a fundamental mistake of man's?A: To think that he is alive, when he has merely fallen asleep in life's waiting-room.

One should not pray if that prayer is vanity.

Has it not occurred to you that, conversely, other people do not have your difficulties because they do not react as you do to what happens?

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