Quotes from Idries Shah

Sufism is something which happens to a person, not something which is given to him.

El Sufismo es algo que le ocurre a una persona, y no algo que se le da.

Eres lo suficientemente ignorante para esperar equitación de un herrero?

Spirituality is the essence of religion. And there is, again, an essence of spirituality; Sufism is the essence of essences.

La espiritualidad: la esencia de la religión. Y también hay, una esencia de la espiritualidad: el Sufismo es la esencia de las esencias.

You want to become wise in one lesson: First become a real human being.

PEOPLE Kick them -- they'll forgive you. Flatter them -- they may or may not see through you. But ignore, them, and they'll hate you, even if they conceal it until they die.

Many people imagine that any higher human development, if it exists at all, must follow a pattern whose form (or at least whose beginning) is instantly perceptible to them as such. In making this assumption these people expose themselves to control by any systems which can take advantage of this expectation. And systems do take advantage of this

The purpose of Sufism is not to be what people imagine it should be –but to help in the attainment of the real destiny of man.

El propósito del Sufismo no es ser lo que la gente imagina que debería ser, sino ayudar en la consecución del verdadero destino del hombre.

En los países en donde no hay caballos, a los burros se les llama caballos.

Superficially, most of the Nasrudin stories may be used as jokes. They are told and retold endlessly in the teahouses and the caravanserais, in the homes and on the radio waves, of Asia. But it is inherent in the Nasrudin story that it may be understood at any one of many depths. There is the joke, the moral — and the little extra which brings the consciousness of the potential mystic a little further on the way to realisation.

Serious things cannot be understood without humorous things Nor opposites without opposites.

Jan-Fishan: Potreste seguire il torrente. Cercate di capire che conduce all'oceano. Non confondetelo con l'oceano.

Las cosas serias no se pueden entender sin las cosas humorísticas; ni los opuestos sin opuestos.

Jan-Fishan: Es posible que sigas un arroyo. Comprende que lleva al Océano. No confundas al arroyo con el Océano.

Judge not the Sufi to be that which you can see of him, my friend. How long, like a child, will you prefer only nuts and raisins?

No juzgues al Sufi por lo que tú puedas ver en él, amigo mío. ¿Por cuánto tiempo preferirás, como un niño, solo nueces y pasas?.

Quien se convierta a sí mismo en salvado será comido por vacas.

La caridad ha sido convertida en una gran virtud sólo por el bajo nivel de decencia humana.

The imagination of the wise is truer than the knowledge of fools.

Formerly,' according to the Sheikh Abu el-Hasan Fushanji, 'being a Sufi was a reality without a name. Today it is a name without a reality.

Take the wheat, not the measure in which it is contained' (Rumi, Mathnawi

La imaginación del sabio es más verdadera que el conocimiento de los tontos.