Sufis Quotes

He who knows himself, knows his Lord' means, among other things, that self-deception prevents knowledge.

~ Idries Shah

It has truly been said that 'Humility is not so much a virtue as a necessity, in order to learn.

~ Idries Shah

Words have to die if humans are to live.

~ Idries Shah

Study institutions may become visible when the head is more emptied of imaginings.

~ Idries Shah

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.

~ Idries Shah

Man (and woman) has an infinite capacity for self-development. Equally, he has an infinite capacity for self-destruction.

~ Idries Shah

Never follow any impulse to teach, however strong it might be. The command to teach is not felt as an impulsion.

~ Idries Shah

Do not try to be humble: learn humility.

~ Idries Shah

If your desire for 'good' is based on greed, it is not good, but greed.

~ Idries Shah

To copy a virtue in another is more copying than it is virtue. Try to learn what that virtue is based upon.

~ Idries Shah

If you seek a teacher, try to become a real student. If you want to be a student, try to find a real teacher.

~ Idries Shah

If you cannot laugh frequently and genuinely, you have no soul.

~ Idries Shah

Assume that you are part-hypocrite and part heedless, and you will not be far wrong.

~ Idries Shah

The man who knows must discharge a function. The one who does not, cannot arrogate one to himself; he can only try to do so.

~ Idries Shah

There is no wisdom where there is no common sense: it cannot under those conditions find any expression.

~ Idries Shah

None should say: 'I can trust' or 'I cannot trust' until he is a master of the option, of trusting or not trusting.

~ Idries Shah

You have come a long way, and you do not know it. You have a long way to go, and you do know what that means.

~ Idries Shah

Many things which are called 'secrets' are only things withheld from people until they can understand or effectively experience them.

~ Idries Shah

You can learn more in half an hour's direct contact with a source of knowledge (no matter the apparent reason for the contact or the subject of the transaction) than you can in years of formal effort.

~ Idries Shah

It is a Sufi contention that truth is not discovered or maintained by the mere repetition of teachings. It can only be kept understood by the perpetual experience of it. And it is in the experience of truth that the Sufis have always reposed their trust. Sufism is therefore not 'Do as I say and not as I do', or even 'Do as I do', but 'Experience it and you will know'.

~ Idries Shah

Anybody or anything may stand between you and knowledge if you are unfit for it.

~ Idries Shah

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.

~ Idries Shah

Inner Knowledge -- You want to become wise in one lesson: First become a real human being.

~ Idries Shah

He had found riches beyond worldly imagination. He had found the never ending well of love.

~ Soroosh Shahrivar

The important place held by Jesus among the world's six hundred million Moslems... and the agreement of both religions about the necessity for surrender to God as the means of salvation, thus makes it comparatively easy for a Moslem to address himself to Christians: the sympathy and the history are already there.

~ Idries Shah

From imperial, economic and ideological causes, many cultures are the inheritors, and hence the prisoners, of attitudes of scorn and disdain for other faiths – outlooks which are not ennobling to anyone.

~ Idries Shah

And there are many people, both Moslem and Christian, who have a good grasp of each others0 conceptions of surrender to God an other principles. But the widespread existence of bias, misinformation and lack of knowledge (…) militate against the effectiveness of dialogue, (…) by the most subtle and one of the most effective of instruments, the subconscious, almost the subliminal, introduction of hostility.

~ Idries Shah

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.

~ Idries Shah

Inscribed on it was a verse from the Quatrains of Omar Khayyam, the eleventh-century Persian mystic. Reading the words aloud I prepared for a most amazing journey:The sages who have compassed sea and land,Their secret to search out and understand,My mind misgives me if they ever solveThe scheme on which the universe is planned.

~ Tahir Shah

When you are still fragmentated, lacking certainty — what difference does it make what your decisions are?

~ Idries Shah

Neither imagine that you are false, nor lash yourself, for both may be forms of self-indulgence.

~ Idries Shah

I will not serve God like a labourer, in expectation of my wages. Rabia

~ Idries Shah

Sufism is known by means of itself.

~ Idries Shah

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

~ Idries Shah

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.

~ Idries Shah

Day and NightThe night is long: do not shorten it by sleep. The day is fair: do not darken it with wrongdoing.

~ Idries Shah

Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaTruthful man:He who is, secretly, regarded by everyone as an enemy.

~ Idries Shah

Ignorance is the Mother of Opposition

~ Idries Shah

The sight of God in woman is the most perfect of all. Ibn Arabi.

~ Idries Shah

You will always have doubts, but only discover them at a useful time for your weakness to point them out.

~ Idries Shah