Shah Quotes
Prescribing hard work for the soft, or easy work for the hardy, is generally nonsense. What is always needed in any aim is right effort, right time, right people, right materials.
It is not only a matter of not caring who knows - it is also a matter of knowing who cares.
My father used to say that stories are part of the most precious heritage of mankind.
Contemplation is a luxury, requiring time and alternatives.
Most journeys have a clear beginning, but on some the ending is less well-defined. The question is, at what point do you bite your lip and head for home?
Enemies are often former or potential friends who have been denied - or think that they have been denied - something.
It is not important to have said a thing first, or best - or even most interestingly. What is important is to say it on the right occasion.
The colour of the water seems to be the colour of the glass into which it has been poured'.
The stupidest man I ever met had a favourite saying. It was: 'What do you think I am, stupid, or something?
The union of the mind and intuition which brings about illumination, and the development which the Sufis seek, is based upon love.
There is a Persian proverb: 'To test that which has been tested is ignorance.' To try to test something without the means of testing is even worse.
You need not wonder whether you should have an unreliable person as a friend. An unreliable person is nobody's friend.
I felt sure we could gain the upper hand by putting ourselves in the mindset of the Incas.
Without hurting anybody, we all tend to laugh at others' discomfort. When someone slips on a banana skin and falls it's funny.
I know it's very idealistic and utopian, but I believe we need to just let everyone not be judged in terms of religion, groups or nations or region.
The forest did not tolerate frailty of body or mind. Show your weakness, and it would consume you without hesitation.
Any man who has ever led an army, an expedition, or a group of Boy Scouts has sadism in his bones.
Premature independence is the daughter of conceit.
If hot food is they key to maintaining an expedition's stamina, then low grade gut-rot alcohol is the key to sustaining its sense of pleasure.
For me, nature is something you watch on the Discovery Channel, or on the evening news -- as you learn how much more of it's been savaged to make way for the Blackberry realm that is my home
For my father there was no sharper way to understand a country than by listening to its stories.
The more wakeful a man is to the things which surround him, the more asleep is he, and his waking is worse than his sleep.
The more you look at 'common knowledge', the more you realise that it is more likely to be common than it is to be knowledge. No real knowledge is common.
If you give what can be taken, you are not really giving. Take what you are given, not what you want to be given. Give what cannot be taken.
MAN: Kick him-he'll forgive you. Flatter him-he may or may not see through you. But ignore him and he'll hate you
The desert was bad, but nothing could compare with the horrors of a tropical rain forest.
The very fact that a Frenchman was prepared, after two minutes of conversation, to be so friendly towards anyone, especially one who had come from England, made me restless.
Do not try to be humble: learn humility.
In India an explanation is often more confusing than what prompted it.
No practice exists in isolation.
If you want to make an ordinary man happy, or think that he is happy, give him money, power, flattery, gifts, honours. If you want to make a wise man happy - improve yourself!
The Sufi is One who does not care when something is taken from him, but who does not cease to seek for what he has not.
History is not usually what has happened. History is what some people have thought to be significant.
Believe, and what was impossible becomes possible what at first was hidden becomes visible.