Quotes from Idries Shah

Remedy Your medicine is in you, and you do not observe it. Your ailment is from yourself, and you do not register it. Hazrat Ali

The impatient man is his own enemy; he slams the door on his own progress.

It is not 'Have I got a chance?' It is more often: 'Have I seen my chance?

Saying of the Prophet Understanding Speak to everyone in accordance with his degree of understanding.

The laziness of adolescence is a rehearsal for the incapacity of old age.

But one may say something and yet not be able to do it. Try, for instance, lifting yourself up by the bootstraps.

I longed to teach, but I had to wait until the desire had left me before I could really do so.

Remembering and Forgetting You have not forgotten to remember; You have remembered to forget. But people can forget to forget. That is just as important as remembering to remember – and generally more practical.

Effort makes some great men famous. Even greater effort enables other great men to remain unknown.

People used to play with toys. Now the toys play with them.

Saying of the Prophet The Tongue A man slips with his tongue more than with his feet.

Saying of the Prophet Food Nobody has eaten better food than that won by his own labour.

Wisdom is when you understand what, previously, at best you only knew.

The word 'choice' is a fraud while people choose only what they have been taught to choose.

If you want to strengthen an enemy and make him exult - hate him.

Saying of the Prophet Struggle The holy warrior is he who struggles with himself.

Teaching: One hour's teaching is better than a whole night of prayer. Saying of the Prophet

History is not usually what has happened. History is what some people have thought to be significant.

The person that you feel yourself to be, according to the Sufis, is a false person, which has no true reality.

People who speak or act in an ordinary fashion are most likely to be those who have been the recipients of higher experiences. But because they do not rage around, wild-eyed, people think that they are very ordinary folk and therefore not aware of anything unknown to the general run of man.

Learn to be as analytical about things of which you are credulous as you are of those which you criticise.

There can be no spirituality, according to the Sufi masters, without psychology, psychological insight and sociological balance.

The sight of God in woman is the most perfect of all." Ibn Arabi.

Three things cannot be retrieved: The arrow once sped from the bow The word spoken in haste The missed opportunity. Ali, the Lion of Islam.