Sufis Quotes

Why did I do such-and-such a thing?' is all very well. But what about 'How otherwise could I have done it?'.

~ Idries Shah

Is your division of Understanding into Greater and Lesser common to all Sufis? Nothing which is put into words is common to all Sufis.

~ Idries Shah

If you assume that it is there, you will generally not be far off the truth.

~ Idries Shah

Man thinks many things. He thinks he is One. He is usually several. Until he becomes One, he cannot have a fair idea of what he is at all.

~ Idries Shah

Correct teaching brings out human excellence.

~ Idries Shah

Sufis deny the absolute reality of time, space and physical form. These things are both relative and local. They only appear to be absolute.

~ Idries Shah

The Sufi saying has it: God, to the bee, is something which has TWO stings!

~ Idries Shah

The object of Sufi preparatory study, however, being to illustrate, expose and out-manoeuvre superficial ambition.

~ Idries Shah

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

~ Idries Shah

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

~ Idries Shah

A man's capacity is the same as his breadth of vision.

~ Idries Shah

A donkey eats a melon, it remains a donkey

~ Idries Shah

Words, they say, are the food of minds. But, like other foods, they can do little by themselves.

~ Idries Shah

When the mind is full of established biases, it will not be able to graft Sufism on top of them.

~ Idries Shah

Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaEmotionalist:A man or woman who thinks he has experienced the divine.

~ Idries Shah

You call me an unbeliever. I shall therefore call you a True Believer since a lie is best met with one of similar magnitude.

~ Idries Shah

Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaIntellectual: One who knows no craft.

~ Idries Shah

People who cannot trust are themselves not trustworthy, and therefore cannot be entrusted with important things.

~ Idries Shah

Question 3: Why should a person study Sufism?Answer: Because he was created to study it, it is his next step.

~ Idries Shah

Patience is the food of understanding.

~ Idries Shah

You fear tomorrow: yet yesterday is just as dangerous.

~ Idries Shah

Saadi’s dictum, in the Bostan: ‘The Path is not in the rosary, the prayer-mat and the robe

~ Idries Shah

The existence of relative truth does not prove the non-existence of universal truth.

~ Idries Shah

HE is a Master who may teach without it being totally labelled teaching, HE is a student who can learn without being obsessed by learning.

~ Idries Shah

When people believe that the form is more important than the Truth, they will not find truth, but will stay with form.

~ Idries Shah

Remember that greed includes greed for being not greedy.

~ Idries Shah

There is a saying that, according to what a person's mentality is, even an angel may seem to him to have a devil's face.

~ Idries Shah

Learning how to learn involves examining assumptions. Mulla Nasrudin tales very often fulfil this funcition.

~ Idries Shah

Show a man too many camels' bones,or show them to him too often,and he will not be able to recognize a camel when he comes across a live one.

~ Idries Shah

It is axiomatic that the attempt to become a Sufi through a desire for personal power as normally understood will not succeed.

~ Idries Shah

The Way of the Sufis cannot be understood by means of the intellect or by ordinary book learning.

~ Idries Shah

Better to be safe than to be sorry' is a remark of value only when these are the actual alternatives.

~ Idries Shah

If you seek small things to do, and do them well, great things will seek you, and demand to be performed.

~ Idries Shah

Study the assumptions behind your actions. Then study the assumptions behind your assumptions.

~ Idries Shah

Worry is a cloud which rains destruction.

~ Idries Shah

They asked Abboud of Omdurman: 'Which is better, to be young or to be old?' He said: 'To be old is to have less time before you and more mistakes behind. I leave you to decide whether this is better than the reverse.

~ Idries Shah

It is no accident that Sufis find that they can connect most constructively with people who are well integrated into the world, as well as having higher aims, and that those who adopt a sensible attitude towards society and life as generally known can usually absorb Sufi teachings very well indeed

~ Idries Shah

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.

~ Idries Shah

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.

~ Idries Shah

Show a man too many camels' bones, or show them to him too often, and he will not be able to recognize a camel when he comes across a live one. (Mirza Ahsan of Tabriz)

~ Idries Shah