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To be selfless, you would give charity anonymously, walj softly on the earth, and look out for others-even total strangers-before you look out for yourself. For the Arab mind, the self is an obstacle, an impediment, in humanity's quest foe real progress.

Tahir Shah

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Tahir Shah
Age: 57
Born: 1966
Born: November 16
Author
Comedian
Explorer
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Would
Give
Obstacles
Foe
Look
Total
Softly
Self
Stranger
Obstacle
Looks
Charity
Selfless
Giving
Progress
Arab
Real
Humanity
Quests
Anonymously
Even
Others
Quest
Impediment
Mind
Earth
Strangers
Impediments

More quotes by Tahir Shah

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There is nothing quite as unpleasant as wearing a pair of briefs which have been trailed through a Calcutta courtyard. Nothing, that is, except having one's elbows and knees lacerated by unseen slivers of glass and discarded razor blades.
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The inertia of a jungle village is a dangerous thing. Before you know it your whole life has slipped by and you are still waiting there.
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For me, nature is something you watch on the Discovery Channel, or on the evening news -- as you learn how much more of it's been savaged to make way for the Blackberry realm that is my home
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There's nothing like a pack of mules to give one a sense of entourage.
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Explorers like to pretend that they are a select breed of people with iron nerve and an ability to endure terrible hardship.
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Spend sixteen weeks in the jungle and you being to question your own sanity, especially when you are the one goading everyone else ahead.
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Foras Road has a sordid reputation (…) Old crones sat in doorways, while their daughters were pushed out to earn money. It is intriguing that a society which is very covert with sexuality should be so straightforward about prostitution.
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I was becoming addicted to Bombay. There was squalor and poverty, but I had begun to realise my good fortune and would never again forget it.
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It is almost impossible to overemphasize the importance with which ancestry is held in the Middle East and North Africa.
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A man who embarks on a journey must know when to end it.
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Contemplation is a luxury, requiring time and alternatives.
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The backstreet cafe in Casablanca was for me a place of mystery, a place with a soul, a place with danger. There was a sense that the safety nets had been cut away, that each citizen walked upon the high wire of this, the real world. I longed not merely to travel through it, but to live in such a city.
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For my father there was no sharper way to understand a country than by listening to its stories.
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Real travel is not about the highlights with which you dazzle your friends once you're home. It's about the loneliness, the solitude, the evenings spent by yourself, pining to be somewhere else. Those are the moments of true value. You feel half proud of them and half ashamed and you hold them to your heart.
Tahir Shah
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Previous journeys had taught me the danger of taking too much stuff.
Tahir Shah
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Stories are not like the real world they aren't held back by what we know is false or true. What's important is how a story makes you feel inside.
Tahir Shah
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Once in a very long time you come across a book that is far, far more than the ink, the glue and the paper, a book that seeps into your blood.
Tahir Shah
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Most journeys have a clear beginning, but on some the ending is less well-defined. The question is, at what point do you bite your lip and head for home?
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Buy a house in a foreign country and, it seems, that anything which can go wrong usually does.
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Move to a new country and you quickly see that visiting a place as a tourist, and actually moving there for good, are two very different things.
Tahir Shah