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If, from time to time, you give up expectation, you will be able to perceive what it is you are getting.

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
Giving
Time
Expectation
Perceive
Expectations
Getting
Give
Able

More quotes by 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.
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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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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.
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Trying to force something is the best way to stop it happening.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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A generous person may not have wisdom: but, unlike others, he has the means to gain it.
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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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When the Higher Man does something worthy of admiration, it is an evidence of his Mastership, not the object of it.
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You need not wonder whether you should have an unreliable person as a friend. An unreliable person is nobody's friend.
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The Sufi way is through knowledge and practice, not through intellect and talk.
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.
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You are adrift while you still think that a means is an end.
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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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The laziness of adolescence is a rehearsal for the incapacity of old age.
Idries Shah
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Advice is priceless: when it becomes interference it is preposterous.
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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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 impatient man is his own enemy he slams the door on his own progress.
Idries Shah