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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
Giving
Really
Taken
Given
Cannot
Give
Take

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When you realize the difference between the container and the content, you will have knowledge.
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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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Learn to be as analytical about things of which you are credulous as you are of those which you criticise.
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Opinion is usually something which people have when they lack comprehensive information.
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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.
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When tomorrow comes, think tomorrow's thoughts.
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Better to be safe than to be sorry' is a remark of value only when these are the actual alternatives.
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The impatient man is his own enemy he slams the door on his own progress.
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One cannot learn from someone whom one distrusts.
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The Sufi way is through knowledge and practice, not through intellect and talk.
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Right time, right place, right people equals success. Wrong time, wrong place, wrong people equals most of the real human history.
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Effort makes some great men famous. Even greater effort enables other great men to remain unknown.
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The learned person who only talks will never Penetrate to the inner heart of humans.
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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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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!
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The secret of Sufism is that it has no secret at all'.
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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.
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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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Sometimes a pessimist is only an optimist with extra information.
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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