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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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Idries Shah
Age: 72 †
Born: 1924
Born: June 16
Died: 1996
Died: November 23
Author
Collector Of Fairy Tales
Teacher
Writer
Simla
Arkon Daraul
Given
Cannot
Give
Take
Giving
Really
Taken
More quotes by Idries Shah
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
The sufis believe that they can experience something more complete.
Idries Shah
To 'see both sides' of a problem is the surest way to prevent its complete solution. Because there are always more than two sides.
Idries Shah
Sometimes a pessimist is only an optimist with extra information.
Idries Shah
Right time, right place, right people equals success. Wrong time, wrong place, wrong people equals most of the real human history.
Idries Shah
Worry is a cloud which rains destruction.
Idries Shah
You need not wonder whether you should have an unreliable person as a friend. An unreliable person is nobody's friend.
Idries Shah
If your desire for 'good' is based on greed, it is not good, but greed.
Idries Shah
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
He that is purified by love is pure and he that is absorbed in the Beloved and hath abandoned all else is a Sufi.Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah.
Idries Shah
Opinion is usually something which people have when they lack comprehensive information.
Idries Shah
The chicken had his wish, and was magically transformed into a fox. Then he found that he could not digest grain.
Idries Shah
It is not only a matter of not caring who knows - it is also a matter of knowing who cares.
Idries Shah
The Path is not to be found anywhere except in human service
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
If you are uninterested in what I say, there's an end to it. If you like what I say, please try to understand which previous influences have made you like it. If you like some of the things I say, and dislike others, you could try to understand why. If you dislike all I say, why not try to find out what formed your attitude?
Idries Shah
If you can turn a murderer into a mere thief, you are making progress.
Idries Shah
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
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
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