“It is the message, not the man, which is important to the Sufis.”
― Idries Shah, quote from The Sufis
“The sufis believe that they can experience something more complete.”
― Idries Shah, quote from The Sufis
“Deep in the sea are riches beyond compare. But if you seek safety, it is on the shore.”
― Idries Shah, quote from The Sufis
“Sufism, the "secret tradition," is not available on the basis of assumptions which belong to another world, the world of intellect.”
― Idries Shah, quote from The Sufis
“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”
― Idries Shah, quote from The Sufis
“The function of a nutrient is to become transmuted, not to leave unaltered traces.”
― Idries Shah, quote from The Sufis
“among roses, be a rose, among thorns, be a thorn”
― Idries Shah, quote from The Sufis
“Scholars of the East and West have heroically consecrated their whole working lives to making available, by means of their own disciplines, Sufi literary and philosophical material to the world at large. In many cases they have faithfully recorded the Sufis' own reiteration that the Way of the Sufis cannot be understood by means of the intellect or by ordinary book learning.”
― Idries Shah, quote from The Sufis
“إن المتصوفة انتقلوا بالحضور الأنثوي للمرأة، روحيا وجسديا إلى الفضاء الجمالي، وأصبحت المرأة هي المجلى الأكمل للجمال الإلهي المطلق.”
― Idries Shah, quote from The Sufis
“It is axiomatic that the attempt to become a Sufi through a desire for personal power as normally understood will not succeed.”
― Idries Shah, quote from The Sufis
“If you will not reprove yourself,’ Saadi says, ‘you will not welcome reproof from another.”
― Idries Shah, quote from The Sufis
“The Way of the Sufis cannot be understood by means of the intellect or by ordinary book learning.”
― Idries Shah, quote from The Sufis
“The secret protects itself. It is found only in the spirit and practice of the Work.”
― Idries Shah, quote from The Sufis
“The basic urge toward mysticism is never, in the unaltered man, clear enough to be recognized for what it is.”
― Idries Shah, quote from The Sufis
“Lo Aparente es el Puente hacia lo Real’.”
― Idries Shah, quote from The Sufis
“Practise your knowledge, for knowledge without practice is a body without life”
― Idries Shah, quote from The Sufis
“Take the wheat, not the measure in which it is contained”
― Idries Shah, quote from The Sufis
“Es necesario notar – dice Rumi – que cosas antagónicas trabajan juntas, aunque nominalmente sean opuestas.”
― Idries Shah, quote from The Sufis
“Sufism is known by means of itself.”
― Idries Shah, quote from The Sufis
“When you are still fragmentated, lacking certainty — what difference does it make what your decisions are?”
― Idries Shah, quote from The Sufis
“El camino de los sufis no puede ser comprendido valiéndose del intelecto o mediante el común aprendizaje a través de libros.”
― Idries Shah, quote from The Sufis
“He who is fortunately enlightened [the Sufi]
Knows that sophistry is from the devil and love from Adam.”
― Idries Shah, quote from The Sufis
“The totality of life cannot be understood, so runs Sufi teaching, if it is studied only through the methods which we use in everyday living.”
― Idries Shah, quote from The Sufis
“Aquel que es afortunadamente iluminado (el Sufi)
Sabe que la sofistería procede del diablo, y el amor de Adán.”
― Idries Shah, quote from The Sufis
“Según la enseñanza Sufi, no es posible entender la vida en su totalidad si se la analiza según los métodos utilizados en nuestra cotidianidad.”
― Idries Shah, quote from The Sufis
“The Apparent is the Bridge to the Real”
― Idries Shah, quote from The Sufis
Idries Shah
Born place: in Simla, India
Born date June 16, 1924
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“... it is the purpose of this history to trace not the mere outlines of a life but the inner plan, not the external markings but the secret soul.”
― Steven Millhauser, quote from Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954 by Jeffrey Cartwright
“Hell, we make our own ifs. I had better things to think about than what could have happend”
― Roger Zelazny, quote from The Guns of Avalon
“While their parents knew a different life and would never really feel at home again without it, their kids had never known anything else and would never really feel whole because of it. Over”
― quote from From Beirut to Jerusalem
“This is not mere sentimentality. The triumph of twentieth-century metropolitan life is, in a real sense, the triumph of one image over the other: the dark ritual of deadly epidemics replaced by the convivial exchanges of strangers from different backgrounds sharing ideas on the sidewalk.”
― Steven Johnson, quote from The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic - and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World
“When I started working in commercials, I quickly learned some rules for hawking products: 1. Audiences like their soda in frosty mugs. It should look straight out of Santa’s Village. 2. People respond to cereal floating in foamy milk. 3. When lapping up soup, viewers like to see kids dressed in cable knit sweaters by a fire. 4. A golden retriever in the background never hurt the sale of anything.”
― Kirk Cameron, quote from Still Growing: An Autobiography
The Black Tulip
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