Idries Shah
Anyone can see that an ass laden with books remains a donkey. A human being laden with the undigested results of a tussle with thoughts and books, however, still passes for wise.Collection: Wise
When the ignorant have become numerous or powerful enough, they have been referred to by a special name. This names is 'the Wise'.Collection: Wise
The colour of the water seems to be the colour of the glass into which it has been poured'.Collection: Glasses
The impatient man is his own enemy; he slams the door on his own progress.Collection: Men
It is the message, not the man, which is important to the Sufis.Collection: Men
The union of the mind and intuition which brings about illumination, and the development which the Sufis seek, is based upon love.Collection: Illumination
Scholars of the East and West have heroically consecrated their whole working lives to making available, by means of their own disciplines, Sufi literary and philosophical material to the world at large. In many cases they have faithfully recorded the Sufis' own reiteration that the Way of the Sufis cannot be understood by means of the intellect or by ordinary book learning.Collection: Book
One cannot learn from someone whom one distrusts.Collection: Distrust
You need not wonder whether you should have an unreliable person as a friend. An unreliable person is nobody's friend.Collection: Should Have
There is a succession of experiences which together constitute the educational and developmental ripening of the learner, according to the Sufis. People who think that each gain is the goal itself will freeze at any such stage, and cannot learn through successive and superseding lessons.Collection: Educational
If you can turn a murderer into a mere thief, you are making progress.Collection: Progress
Do not try to be humble: learn humility.Collection: Humble
Enemies are often former or potential friends who have been denied - or think that they have been denied - something.Collection: Thinking
A real secret is something which only one person knows.Collection: Real
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.Collection: Ignorance
One can give or withhold in a manner far more effective, sophisticated, useful, which is quite invisible to people who think that giving or withholding is done by external assessment. If you seek some mark of favour or 'promotion', know that you are not ready for it. Progress comes through capacity to learn, and is irresistible. Nobody can stand between you and knowledge if you are fit for it.Collection: Thinking
People today are in danger of drowning in information; but, because they have been taught that information is useful, they are more willing to drown than they need be. If they could handle information, they would not have to drown at all.Collection: People
If a pot can multiply. One day Nasrudin lent his cooking pots to a neighbour, who was giving a feast. The neighbour returned them, together with one extra one – a very tiny pot. 'What is this?' asked Nasrudin. 'According to law, I have given you the offspring of your property which was born when the pots were in my care,' said the joker. Shortly afterwards Nasrudin borrowed his neighbour's pots, but did not return them. The man came round to get them back. 'Alas!' said Nasrudin, 'they are dead. We have established, have we not, that pots are mortal?'.Collection: Men
A man who believes the word of a donkey in preference to my word does not deserve to be lent anything.Collection: Believe
The secret of Sufism is that it has no secret at all'.Collection: Secret
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.Collection: Hard Work
If the path has been laid down, why the successive appearance of different teachers? Why would anyone reinvent the wheel, if everything were as cosy and sequential as primitive longing so easily convinces us?Collection: Teacher
Christian scholars often say that Sufi theories are close to those of Christianity. Many Moslems maintain that they are essentially derived from Islam. The resemblance of many Sufi ideas to those of several religious and esoteric systems are sometimes taken as evidence of derivation. The Islamic interpretation is that religion is of one origin, differences being due to local or historical causes.Collection: Christian
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.Collection: Taken
Like the bat, the Sufi is asleep to 'things of the day' - the familiar struggle for existence which the ordinary man finds all-important - and vigilant while others are asleep. In other words, he keeps awake the spiritual attention dormant in others. That 'mankind sleeps in a nightmare of unfulfillment' is a commonplace of Sufi literatureCollection: Spiritual
The Way of the Sufis cannot be understood by means of the intellect or by ordinary book learning.Collection: Book
No practice exists in isolation.Collection: Practice
The sufis believe that they can experience something more complete.Collection: Believe
It is not enough that there is a collection of people with the common aim of working in unison towards an objective... Aspiration and desire only are not enough.Collection: People
When the lion had eaten its fill, and the jackals had taken their share, the ants came along and finished up the meat from the bones of the haughty stag.Collection: Taken
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.Collection: May
He that is purified by love is pure; and he that is absorbed in the Beloved and hath abandoned all else is a Sufi.Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah.Collection: Love Is
A king who feared wasps once decreed that they were abolished. As it happened, they did him no harm. But he was eventually stung to death by scorpions.Collection: Kings
None should say: 'I can trust' or 'I cannot trust' until he is a master of the option, of trusting or not trusting.Collection: Should
People who speak or act in an ordinary fashion are most likely to be those who have been the recipients of higher experiences. But because they do not rage around, wild-eyed, people think that they are very ordinary folk and therefore not aware of anything unknown to the general run of man.Collection: Running
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.Collection: People
The main problem is that most commentators are accustomed to thinking of spiritual schools as 'systems', which are more or less alike, and which depend upon dogma and ritual: and especially upon repetition and the application of continual and standardised pressures upon their followers.The Sufi way, except in degenerate forms which are not to be classified as Sufic, is entirely different from this.Collection: Spiritual
When the Higher Man does something worthy of admiration, it is an evidence of his Mastership, not the object of it.Collection: Men
But one may say something and yet not be able to do it. Try, for instance, lifting yourself up by the bootstraps.Collection: Trying
Advice is priceless: when it becomes interference it is preposterous.Collection: Advice
We view Sufism not as an ideology that molds people to the right way of belief or action, but as an art or science that can exert a beneficial influence on individuals and societies, in accordance with the needs of those individuals and societies ... Sufi study and development gives one capacities one did not have before.Collection: Art
The learned person who only talks will never Penetrate to the inner heart of humans.Collection: Heart
Many things which are called 'secrets' are only things withheld from people until they can understand or effectively experience them.Collection: People
To be obsessed by the idea of freedom, for instance, is itself a form of slavery. Such people are in the chains of the hope of freedom, and are therefore able to do little else than struggle with them.Collection: Struggle
If your desire for 'good' is based on greed, it is not good, but greed.Collection: Greed
Premature independence is the daughter of conceit.Collection: Daughter
MAN: Kick him-he'll forgive you. Flatter him-he may or may not see through you. But ignore him and he'll hate youCollection: Hate
Talking about straws and camels' backs is just one way of approaching things. If you have enough camels, no backs need be broken.Collection: Talking
An egocentric pessimist is a person who thinks he hasn't changed, but that other people are behaving worse than before.Collection: Thinking