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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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Idries Shah
Age: 72 †
Born: 1924
Born: June 16
Died: 1996
Died: November 23
Author
Collector Of Fairy Tales
Teacher
Writer
Simla
Arkon Daraul
Thinking
Happy
Money
Honours
Power
Flattery
Give
Honour
Giving
Gifts
Make
Improve
Men
Ordinary
Think
Wise
More quotes by Idries Shah
Do not try to be humble: learn humility.
Idries Shah
Worry is a cloud which rains destruction.
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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.
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Trying to force something is the best way to stop it happening.
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Effort makes some great men famous. Even greater effort enables other great men to remain unknown.
Idries Shah
History is not usually what has happened. History is what some people have thought to be significant.
Idries Shah
Exercise power by means of kindness, and you may be causing more damage than you could by cruelty. Neither approach is correct.
Idries Shah
Advice is priceless: when it becomes interference it is preposterous.
Idries Shah
Better to be safe than to be sorry' is a remark of value only when these are the actual alternatives.
Idries Shah
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
When the Higher Man does something worthy of admiration, it is an evidence of his Mastership, not the object of it.
Idries Shah
Many things which are called 'secrets' are only things withheld from people until they can understand or effectively experience them.
Idries Shah
The impatient man is his own enemy he slams the door on his own progress.
Idries Shah
A generous person may not have wisdom: but, unlike others, he has the means to gain it.
Idries Shah
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
The sufis believe that they can experience something more complete.
Idries Shah
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
Sometimes a pessimist is only an optimist with extra information.
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 Sufi way is through knowledge and practice, not through intellect and talk.
Idries Shah