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The laziness of adolescence is a rehearsal for the incapacity of old age.

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
Incapacity
Rehearsal
Adolescence
Laziness
Age

More quotes by Idries Shah

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Sometimes a pessimist is only an optimist with extra information.
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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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The word 'choice' is a fraud while people choose only what they have been taught to choose.
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'.
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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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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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Have you noticed how many people who walk in the shade curse the Sun?
Idries Shah
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The chicken had his wish, and was magically transformed into a fox. Then he found that he could not digest grain.
Idries Shah
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If you give what can be taken, you are not really giving. Take what you are given, not what you want to be given. Give what cannot be taken.
Idries Shah
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Anyone can see that an ass laden with books remains a donkey. A human being laden with the undigested results of a tussle with thoughts and books, however, still passes for wise.
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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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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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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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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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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You need not wonder whether you should have an unreliable person as a friend. An unreliable person is nobody's friend.
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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History is not usually what has happened. History is what some people have thought to be significant.
Idries Shah
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Learn to be as analytical about things of which you are credulous as you are of those which you criticise.
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