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If your desire for 'good' is based on greed, it is not good, but greed.

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
Good
Greed
Based
Desire

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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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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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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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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.
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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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People used to play with toys. Now the toys play with them.
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When you realize the difference between the container and the content, you will have knowledge.
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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.
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A man who believes the word of a donkey in preference to my word does not deserve to be lent anything.
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Opinion is usually something which people have when they lack comprehensive information.
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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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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.
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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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When the Higher Man does something worthy of admiration, it is an evidence of his Mastership, not the object of it.
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Do not try to be humble: learn humility.
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The sufis believe that they can experience something more complete.
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You need not wonder whether you should have an unreliable person as a friend. An unreliable person is nobody's friend.
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Advice is priceless: when it becomes interference it is preposterous.
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A certain person may have, as you say, a wonderful presence I do not know. What I do know is that he has a perfectly delightful absence.
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