Idries Shah Quotes

Take the straight path, even if it is long: marry no widow, even if she is a houri.

You make me a sinner if you stop me giving you hospitality.

It will pass, whatever it is.

You will never reach Mecca, I fear: for you are on the road to Turkestan.

A stolen kiss is not easily returned.

Man has less than he suspects of: Time, Friends, Hopes, Qualities.Proverb

Much smoke has been seen, and caused great fear of fire — even when no fire ensued.

I ask about the sky, but the answer is about a rope.

MAGHRIBI: Learning is in activity. Learning through words alone is minor activity.

Each flies with its own kind: pigeon with pigeon, hawk with hawk.

One day the cub will become a wolf, even if it has been reared among the sons of man.

Be kind to the hawk and harm the sparrow.

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

Better the demon which makes you improve than the angel who threatens.

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

Have the nature of a dervish: then wear a stylish cap.

Pick up a bee from kindness, and learn the limitations of kindness.

No effort makes a black crow into a white hawk.

If the father cannot, the son will finish the task.

I am the Real, for I have not ceased to be real – through the Real.

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

If you want to be a calligrapher, write, and write, and write.

BARQI: AESTHETICS IS ONLY THE LOWEST FORM OF PERCEPTION OF THE REAL.

Generosity is also marked by doing what one says one will do. Saadi teaches: ‘when the generous promise, they perform

When sense has left a head, it should be called a tail.

Until you can understand illogicality, and the meaningfulness of it, shun the Sufis except for limited, precise, self-evident services.

Nothing cheap without reason.

Information about the activities of one body of Sufis may be harmful to the potential of another.

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

I will not serve God like a labourer, in expectation of my wages.

The definition of the word 'finished' is: 'This word means finished.

Brave is the thief who carries a lamp in his hand.

Before garden, vine or grape was in the world, " writes one, "our soul was drunken with immortal wine.

What you are pleased to call Sufism is merely the record of past method.

Sufism is that which succeeds in bringing to man the High Knowledge.

Of whom can we think well when it is believed that if nothing bad is done to you, this has been a kindness?

Sufi Teachers are not, as you might hope, people who make you feel peace and harmony.

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

Those who say ‘I am ready to learn’, or ‘I am not ready to learn’ are as often mistaken as they are correct in their surmise.

Right time, right place, right people equals success.Wrong time, wrong place, wrong people equals most of the real human history.

Before the antidote arrives from Iraq The man with snake-bite will be dead.

He who sleeps on the Road will lose either his hat or his head.

Angels are the powers hidden in the faculties and organs of man

What is humanity? To feel pain at the sorrows of our neighbours, to feel humiliated at the humiliation of fellow-beings.

Definitions from Mulla Do-Piaza.Poverty: The result of marriage.