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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
More quotes by Idries Shah
The impatient man is his own enemy he slams the door on his own progress.
Idries Shah
Materialism, attachment to things of the world, includes pride. Many religious people suffer from pride: taking pleasure or even delight in being good, or religious.
Idries Shah
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
Worry is a cloud which rains destruction.
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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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It is not important to have said a thing first, or best - or even most interestingly. What is important is to say it on the right occasion.
Idries Shah
A generous person may not have wisdom: but, unlike others, he has the means to gain it.
Idries Shah
If, from time to time, you give up expectation, you will be able to perceive what it is you are getting.
Idries Shah
The word 'choice' is a fraud while people choose only what they have been taught to choose.
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
The sufis believe that they can experience something more complete.
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
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
If you can turn a murderer into a mere thief, you are making progress.
Idries Shah
But one may say something and yet not be able to do it. Try, for instance, lifting yourself up by the bootstraps.
Idries Shah
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
Trying to force something is the best way to stop it happening.
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
Knowledge is not gained, it is there all the time. It is the veils which have to be dissolved in the mind.
Idries Shah
If your desire for 'good' is based on greed, it is not good, but greed.
Idries Shah