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

More quotes by Idries Shah

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Opinion is usually something which people have when they lack comprehensive information.
Idries Shah
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A certain person may have, as you say, a wonderful presence I do not know. What I do know is that he has a perfectly delightful absence.
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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When a belief becomes more than an instrument, you are lost. You remain lost until you learn what 'belief' is really for.
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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Sometimes a pessimist is only an optimist with extra information.
Idries Shah
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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
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From time to time ponder whether you are unconsciously saying: 'Truth is what I happen to be thinking at this moment.
Idries Shah
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Like the bat, the Sufi is asleep to 'things of the day' - the familiar struggle for existence which the ordinary man finds all-important - and vigilant while others are asleep. In other words, he keeps awake the spiritual attention dormant in others. That 'mankind sleeps in a nightmare of unfulfillment' is a commonplace of Sufi literature
Idries Shah
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Effort makes some great men famous. Even greater effort enables other great men to remain unknown.
Idries Shah
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Knowledge is not gained, it is there all the time. It is the veils which have to be dissolved in the mind.
Idries Shah
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People today are in danger of drowning in information but, because they have been taught that information is useful, they are more willing to drown than they need be. If they could handle information, they would not have to drown at all.
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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One cannot learn from someone whom one distrusts.
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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Advice is priceless: when it becomes interference it is preposterous.
Idries Shah
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But one may say something and yet not be able to do it. Try, for instance, lifting yourself up by the bootstraps.
Idries Shah
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The sufis believe that they can experience something more complete.
Idries Shah
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Trying to force something is the best way to stop it happening.
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