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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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One cannot learn from someone whom one distrusts.
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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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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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It is not only a matter of not caring who knows - it is also a matter of knowing who cares.
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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 learned person who only talks will never Penetrate to the inner heart of humans.
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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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Sometimes a pessimist is only an optimist with extra information.
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The secret of Sufism is that it has no secret at all'.
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Opinion is usually something which people have when they lack comprehensive information.
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When tomorrow comes, think tomorrow's thoughts.
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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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Worry is a cloud which rains destruction.
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History is not usually what has happened. History is what some people have thought to be significant.
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Trying to force something is the best way to stop it happening.
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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.
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To be obsessed by the idea of freedom, for instance, is itself a form of slavery. Such people are in the chains of the hope of freedom, and are therefore able to do little else than struggle with them.
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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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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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The Sufi way is through knowledge and practice, not through intellect and talk.
Idries Shah