Idries Shah Quotes

Whoever gives knowledge to a fool loses itAnd who keeps it from the deserving does wrong.

~ Idries Shah

Remembering and ForgettingYou have not forgotten to remember, You have remembered to forget.But people can forget to forget. That is just as important as remembering to remember – and generally more practical.

~ Idries Shah

ServiceI will not serve God like a labourer, in expectation of my wages.Rabia el-Adawia.

~ Idries Shah

Generosity is also marked by doing what one says one will do.

~ Idries Shah

Sufism is therefore not 'Do as I say and not as I do', or even 'Do as I do', but 'Experience and you will know'.

~ Idries Shah

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.

~ Idries Shah

The people of the world have a fixed destiny. But the spiritually developed receive what is “not” in their destiny.

~ Idries Shah

Counsels of BahaudinYou want to be filled. But something which is full has first to be emptied. Empty yourself so that you will fill properly, by observing these counsels, which you can do as duties to yourself:FirstNever follow any impulse to teach, however strong it might be. The command to teach is not felt as an impulsion.

~ Idries Shah

If you are uninterested in what I say, there's an end to it. If you like what I say, please try to understand which previous influences have made you like it. If you like some of the things I say, and dislike others, you could try to understand why. If you dislike all I say, why not try to find out what formed your attitude?

~ Idries Shah

Voice in the nightA voice whispered to me last night: 'There is no such thing as a voice whispering in the night!

~ Idries Shah

As the Eastern saying, by the sage Hilali, has it, 'one person who understands is worth a hundred who merely obey a custom.

~ Idries Shah

WisdomSufian said: 'The wisdom which is invisible but which sustains is a hundred times better than the appearance of wisdom, for that has itself to be sustained.

~ Idries Shah

A Better Beard that Yours. 'All true devotees wear a beard,' said the Imam to his audience. 'Show me a thick and lustrous beard and I'll show you a true believer!' 'My goat has a beard far bushier and longer than yours,' replied Nasrudin. 'Does that mean he is a better Muslim than you?

~ Idries Shah

Contrary to Expectation. A wise man, the wonder of his age, taught his disciples from a seemingly inexhaustible store of wisdom. He attributed all his knowledge to a thick tome which was kept in a place of honour in his room. The sage would allow nobody to open the volume. When he died, those who had surrounded him, regarding themselves as his heirs, ran to open the book, anxious to possess what it contained. They were surprised, confused and disappointed when they found that there was writing on only one page. They became even more bewildered and then annoyed when they tried to penetrate the meaning of the phrase which met their eyes. It was: 'When you realise the difference between the container and the content, you will have knowledge.

~ Idries Shah

In the modern world we are in a paradoxical situation; because although in theory man knows that he can extend his attention to something and then remove it, he very often does not do so. In many areas he does not look at something and then detach from it, and look at something else.Once he has found something to interest himself in, he cannot detach himself from it efficiently, and therefore he cannot be objective. Note that, in most if not all languages, we have words like 'objectivity' which leads people to imagine that they have it, or can easily use it. That is equivalent (in reality if not in theory) to saying 'I know the word “gold”, so I am rich.

~ Idries Shah

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?'.

~ Idries Shah

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.

~ Idries Shah

The Book of Wisdom. Simab said: 'I shall sell the Book of Wisdom for a hundred gold pieces, and some people will say that it is cheap.' Yunus Marmar said to him: 'And I shall give away the key to understanding it, and almost none shall take it, even free of charge.

~ Idries Shah

Saying of the Mulla Nasrudin. If I survive this life without dying, I'll be surprised.

~ Idries Shah

Salute to the Thief. Junaid of Baghdad was passing the scene of a public hanging, where a thief was on the scaffold. Junaid bowed towards the criminal. Someone asked him: 'What did you do that?' Junaid said: 'I was bowing before his single-mindedness. For his aim, that man has given his life.

~ Idries Shah

When prayer, rituals and ascetic life are just a means of self-indulgence, they are harmful rather than beneficial. This is quite obvious to people nowadays, when it is widely recognised that fixations are not the same as valuable and laudable observances. One should not pray if that prayer is vanity; rituals are wrong when they provide lower satisfactions, like emotional stimulus instead of enlightenment; he or she should not be an ascetic who is only enjoying it.

~ Idries Shah

The would-be students wish to transcend books.But, ask yourselves: if someone says that books do not contain wisdom, and yet he writes books; books do not contain Sufism, and yet he continues to publish books on Sufism, what is really happening? It really is your duty, and not mine, to ask and to find the answer to that question, if you are interested enough.

~ Idries Shah

The Seeking of the Master. Musa Najib was asked why he charged a fee from those who came to his sessions; and why he often did not even address his audience. He said: 'I charge for this object lesson: people believe that knowledge must be given freely, and consequently mistake everything which is free for knowledge. I do not always lecture because, among Sufis, “The Master finds the pupil.” The pupil has to be physically present: but he may be absent in every other sense. When I discern that a pupil is “present” then I “find” him, for then his inner call is audible to me, even if it is silent to him.' 'Seek and you will be found.

~ Idries Shah

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.

~ Idries Shah

You are still adrift while you still think that a means is an end.

~ Idries Shah

I have heard all that you have had to say to me on your problems.You ask me what to do about them.It is my view that your real problem is that you are a member of the human race.Face that one first.

~ Idries Shah

If you want to strengthen an enemy and make him exult - hate him.

~ Idries Shah

When the ignorant have become numerous or powerful enough, they have been referred to by a special name. This names is 'the Wise'.

~ Idries Shah

Learn to be as analytical about things of which you are credulous as you are of those which you criticise.

~ Idries Shah

Who is the wrong person to criticise?You

~ Idries Shah

Greed harms you: generosity helps you. This is why is has been said: 'Greed is the mother of incapacity'.

~ Idries Shah

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.

~ Idries Shah

Water shrinks wool, urgency shrinks time.Shrinkage may be an advantage or the reverse, according to expectation.

~ Idries Shah

A great deal of thought is only a substitute for the thoughts that the individual would really find useful at the time.

~ Idries Shah

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.

~ Idries Shah

The stupidest man I ever met had a favourite saying.It was:'What do you think I am, stupid, or something?

~ Idries Shah

What is sometimes thought to be clever is, significantly often, merely an advanced form of foolishness.

~ Idries Shah

It is the message, not the man, which is important to the Sufis.

~ Idries Shah

You must empty out the dirty water before you fill the pitcher with clean.

~ Idries Shah

The sufis believe that they can experience something more complete.

~ Idries Shah