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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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Idries Shah
Age: 72 †
Born: 1924
Born: June 16
Died: 1996
Died: November 23
Author
Collector Of Fairy Tales
Teacher
Writer
Simla
Arkon Daraul
Exercise
Approach
Means
Causing
Power
Correct
May
Damage
Mean
Cruelty
Kindness
Neither
More quotes by Idries Shah
The secret of Sufism is that it has no secret at all'.
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People used to play with toys. Now the toys play with them.
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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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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.
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If your desire for 'good' is based on greed, it is not good, but greed.
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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 laziness of adolescence is a rehearsal for the incapacity of old age.
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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.
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Effort makes some great men famous. Even greater effort enables other great men to remain unknown.
Idries Shah
Trying to force something is the best way to stop it happening.
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The learned person who only talks will never Penetrate to the inner heart of humans.
Idries Shah
Do not try to be humble: learn humility.
Idries Shah
You are adrift while you still think that a means is an end.
Idries Shah
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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Knowledge is not gained, it is there all the time. It is the veils which have to be dissolved in the mind.
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.
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There is a Persian proverb: 'To test that which has been tested is ignorance.' To try to test something without the means of testing is even worse.
Idries Shah
From time to time ponder whether you are unconsciously saying: 'Truth is what I happen to be thinking at this moment.
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