Shah Quotes
A certain person may have, as you say, a wonderful presence; I do not know. What I do know is that he has a perfectly delightful absence.
From time to time ponder whether you are unconsciously saying: 'Truth is what I happen to be thinking at this moment.
When the ignorant have become numerous or powerful enough, they have been referred to by a special name. This names is 'the Wise'.
If your desire for 'good' is based on greed, it is not good, but greed.
None should say: 'I can trust' or 'I cannot trust' until he is a master of the option, of trusting or not trusting.
Many things which are called 'secrets' are only things withheld from people until they can understand or effectively experience them.
Anybody or anything may stand between you and knowledge if you are unfit for it.
On a hard jungle journey nothing is so important as having a team you can trust.
The human being, whether he realises it or not, is trusting someone or something every moment of the day.
To Succeed, you must reach for the stars, and let your imagination find its own path
Move to a new country and you quickly see that visiting a place as a tourist, and actually moving there for good, are two very different things.
Usually, there is nothing more pleasing that returning to a place where you have endured hardship.
On a harsh expedition, there's no space for anyone who does not intend to finish.
In moments of great uncertainty on my travels, I have always felt that something is protecting me, that I will come to no harm.
In some peculiar way, indeed, the rules were now beginning to seem quite logical. It was then I knew that I had been in India long enough.
There's nothing like a pack of mules to give one a sense of entourage.
One senses that, in these conditions, no amount of wet-wiping could bring true hygiene.
I was becoming addicted to Bombay. There was squalor and poverty, but I had begun to realise my good fortune and would never again forget it.
Searching for a lost city is a particularly European obsession.
When the Higher Man does something worthy of admiration, it is an evidence of his Mastership, not the object of it.
The taste for glory can make ordinary men behave in extraordinary ways.
The first rule of an expedition is that everyone should stick together.
A man who embarks on a journey must know when to end it.
Previous journeys had taught me the danger of taking too much stuff.
Spend sixteen weeks in the jungle and you being to question your own sanity, especially when you are the one goading everyone else ahead.
Dramatic. A well developed sense of the dramatic has values beyond what people usually imagine. One of these is to realise the limitations of a sense of the dramatic.
When people have a hard task to do - one which stretches them - they become less concerned with trivial matters.
Learn to be as analytical about things of which you are credulous as you are of those which you criticise.
You know, I think we Indians are afraid to show and celebrate our happiness, lest things change around. But I feel that it's okay to be sad and okay to show when you are happy.
I was no longer troubled when he pulled out a machete in a crowded bar, tried to pick up schoolgirls, or threatened to scalp us, then rip off our heads and scoop out our brains.
There comes a stage at which a man would rather die cleanly by a bullet than by the unknown terror of the phantom in the forest.
As a travel writer I've specialized in gritty, fearful destinations, the kind of places that make a reader's hair stick on end.
Better to be safe than to be sorry' is a remark of value only when these are the actual alternatives.
Once in a very long time you come across a book that is far, far more than the ink, the glue and the paper, a book that seeps into your blood.
The pursuit of illusion is not about studying for prizes, or for study's sake. There's no right or wrong, no pass or fail.
The Occident has never found it easy to grasp the strange netherworld of spirits that followers of Islam universally believe exist in a realm overlaid our own.
Previous journeys in search of treasure have taught me that a zigzag strategy is the best way to get ahead.
Sometimes a lot of us men think we are doing everything for the woman we love, but there is an aspect of a woman a man doesn't understand.
But one may say something and yet not be able to do it. Try, for instance, lifting yourself up by the bootstraps.
It is almost impossible to overemphasize the importance with which ancestry is held in the Middle East and North Africa.
There can be few situations more fearful than breaking down in darkness on the highway leading to Casablanca. I have rarely felt quite so vulnerable or alone.
The rain of Madre de Dios is similar to that of the Amazon, but there is a petrifying aspect to it, as if it seeks to wound rather than to nurture.
For me, a journey to Damascus is an amazing hunt from beginning to end, a slice through layers of history in search of treasure.
Explorers like to pretend that they are a select breed of people with iron nerve and an ability to endure terrible hardship.
Exercise power by means of kindness, and you may be causing more damage than you could by cruelty. Neither approach is correct.