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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

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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
Lifting
Instance
May
Able
Trying
Something
Bootstraps

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Sometimes a pessimist is only an optimist with extra information.
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The sufis believe that they can experience something more complete.
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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.
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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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It is not only a matter of not caring who knows - it is also a matter of knowing who cares.
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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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The word 'choice' is a fraud while people choose only what they have been taught to choose.
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Advice is priceless: when it becomes interference it is preposterous.
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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 Path is not to be found anywhere except in human service
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People used to play with toys. Now the toys play with them.
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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.
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Worry is a cloud which rains destruction.
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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.
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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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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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Opinion is usually something which people have when they lack comprehensive information.
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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.
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The impatient man is his own enemy he slams the door on his own progress.
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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.
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