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Many things which are called 'secrets' are only things withheld from people until they can understand or effectively experience them.

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
People
Effectively
Secrets
Called
Secret
Understand
Experience
Many
Things
Withheld

More quotes by Idries Shah

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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.
Idries Shah
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People used to play with toys. Now the toys play with them.
Idries Shah
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The Sufi way is through knowledge and practice, not through intellect and talk.
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Advice is priceless: when it becomes interference it is preposterous.
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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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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
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The Path is not to be found anywhere except in human service
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If you can turn a murderer into a mere thief, you are making progress.
Idries Shah
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One cannot learn from someone whom one distrusts.
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The secret of Sufism is that it has no secret at all'.
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Trying to force something is the best way to stop it happening.
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The laziness of adolescence is a rehearsal for the incapacity of old age.
Idries Shah
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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.
Idries Shah
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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.
Idries Shah
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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
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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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History is not usually what has happened. History is what some people have thought to be significant.
Idries Shah
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You are adrift while you still think that a means is an end.
Idries Shah
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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
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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.
Idries Shah