Idries Shah, Seeker After Truth
24 quotes
"When there is a true or useful thing, there is sure to be a counterfeit."
"Q: How can I help myself?A: By remembering the proverb: ‘The Path is not to be found anywhere except in human service’, from Saadi."
"Sufism is education, in that it has a body of knowledge which it transmits to those who have not got it."
"Deteriorated science is a cult, so is imitative or deteriorated Sufism."
"The Path is not to be found anywhere except in human service"
"Saadi’s dictum, in the Bostan: ‘The Path is not in the rosary, the prayer-mat and the robe"
"If you seek small things to do, and do them well, great things will seek you, and demand to be performed."
"Worry is a cloud which rains destruction."
"Has it not occurred to you that, conversely, other people do not have your difficulties because they do not react as you do to what happens?"
"One should not pray if that prayer is vanity."
"Q: What is a fundamental mistake of man's?A: To think that he is alive, when he has merely fallen asleep in life's waiting-room."
"Hariri says, in his Maqamat: ‘Safety is on the river’s BANK."
"Ignorance is the Mother of Opposition"
"The Sufis have said: ‘The importance of something is in inverse proportion to its attractiveness."
"But the Sufis work IN the world, and therefore WITH 'things of the world'."
"Great men are great until they know it. Saints are holy until they know it."
"A Sufi is one who is not bound by anything nor does he bind anything"
"Things which are seemingly opposed may in fact be working together"
"Like calls to like, truth to truth and deceit to deceit."
"Whatever goes into a salt-mine becomes salt."
"It is experience which teaches, not controversy based on supposed logic and assumptions of what is likely to be true."
"I longed to teach, but I had to wait until the desire had left me before I could really do so."
"But the minimum human duty is to serve others: it is no great attainment."
"When prayer, rituals and ascetic life are just a means of self-indulgence, they are harmful rather than beneficial. This is quite obvious to people nowadays, when it is widely recognised that fixations are not the same as valuable and laudable observances. One should not pray if that prayer is vanity; rituals are wrong when they provide lower satisfactions, like emotional stimulus instead of enlightenment; he or she should not be an ascetic who is only enjoying it."