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Materialism, attachment to things of the world, includes pride. Many religious people suffer from pride: taking pleasure or even delight in being good, or religious.

Idries Shah

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Idries Shah
Age: 72 †
Born: 1924
Born: June 16
Died: 1996
Died: November 23
Author
Collector Of Fairy Tales
Teacher
Writer
Simla
Arkon Daraul
Suffering
Includes
Many
Attachment
Even
Suffer
Good
Delight
Things
Pride
World
Taking
People
Pleasure
Religious
Materialism

More quotes by Idries Shah

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Exercise power by means of kindness, and you may be causing more damage than you could by cruelty. Neither approach is correct.
Idries Shah
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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
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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
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The Sufi way is through knowledge and practice, not through intellect and talk.
Idries Shah
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A generous person may not have wisdom: but, unlike others, he has the means to gain it.
Idries Shah
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One of the tragedies of modern times is that people have come to believe that something said by someone in the past, perhaps for illustrative or provocation purposes, actually represents that person's beliefs at the time.
Idries Shah
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You are adrift while you still think that a means is an end.
Idries Shah
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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
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A man who believes the word of a donkey in preference to my word does not deserve to be lent anything.
Idries Shah
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The word 'choice' is a fraud while people choose only what they have been taught to choose.
Idries Shah
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If your desire for 'good' is based on greed, it is not good, but greed.
Idries Shah
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It is not important to have said a thing first, or best - or even most interestingly. What is important is to say it on the right occasion.
Idries Shah
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Right time, right place, right people equals success. Wrong time, wrong place, wrong people equals most of the real human history.
Idries Shah
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Advice is priceless: when it becomes interference it is preposterous.
Idries Shah
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People used to play with toys. Now the toys play with them.
Idries Shah
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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
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If you want to make an ordinary man happy, or think that he is happy, give him money, power, flattery, gifts, honours. If you want to make a wise man happy - improve yourself!
Idries Shah
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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.
Idries Shah
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The more you look at 'common knowledge', the more you realise that it is more likely to be common than it is to be knowledge. No real knowledge is common.
Idries Shah
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Better to be safe than to be sorry' is a remark of value only when these are the actual alternatives.
Idries Shah