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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
Money
Honours
Power
Flattery
Give
Honour
Giving
Gifts
Make
Improve
Men
Ordinary
Think
Wise
Thinking
Happy

More quotes by Idries Shah

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Do not try to be humble: learn humility.
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People used to play with toys. Now the toys play with them.
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Have you noticed how many people who walk in the shade curse the Sun?
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The Path is not to be found anywhere except in human service
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Trying to force something is the best way to stop it happening.
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Learn to be as analytical about things of which you are credulous as you are of those which you criticise.
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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.
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The Sufi way is through knowledge and practice, not through intellect and talk.
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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.
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The secret of Sufism is that it has no secret at all'.
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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'.
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When a belief becomes more than an instrument, you are lost. You remain lost until you learn what 'belief' is really for.
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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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The sufis believe that they can experience something more complete.
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One cannot learn from someone whom one distrusts.
Idries Shah
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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
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The impatient man is his own enemy he slams the door on his own progress.
Idries Shah
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Advice is priceless: when it becomes interference it is preposterous.
Idries Shah
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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
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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