Shah Quotes & Sayings

Be a dog, but don't be a younger brother.

Proverb. — Idries Shah

You know, I think we Indians are afraid to show and celebrate our happiness, lest things change around. But I feel that it's okay to be sad and okay to show when you are happy. — Shah Rukh Khan

A real secret is something which only one person knows. — Idries Shah

The rain of Madre de Dios is similar to that of the Amazon, but there is a petrifying aspect to it, as if it seeks to wound rather than to nurture. — Tahir Shah

Too young to care; Too old to change. — Hafsa Shah

If a Manx cat tells you that it is trying to preserve its long, beautiful tail, you don't have to believe it - especially if you have eyes. — Idries Shah

I love being recognized, I love people liking me, I love the fact that people scream when I go out. I think I'll miss all that when it's taken away. — Shah Rukh Khan

Exercise power by means of kindness, and you may be causing more damage than you could by cruelty. Neither approach is correct. — Idries Shah

Senselessly pontificating about things does not get anything done, doing something about it does. — Murad S. Shah

We view Sufism not as an ideology that molds people to the right way of belief or action, but as an art or science that can exert a beneficial influence on individuals and societies, in accordance with the needs of those individuals and societies ... Sufi study and development gives one capacities one did not have before. — Idries Shah

When we cannot see, we don't judge. Small wonder when we kiss, cry, laugh, make love, are in pain, pray and listen to music, we close our eyes. — Sabine Shah

The ego of a god, the wit of a goldfish. — Shah Wharton

Saying of the Prophet
Distribution
God it is who gives: I am only a distributor. — Idries Shah

The whole of history is the history of murderers. If you become a murderer, fame will be very easy. You can become a prime minister, you can become a president - but these are all masks. Behind them you will find very violent people, terribly violent people hiding, smiling. Those smiles are political, diplomatic. If the mask slips, you will always see Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Nadir Shah, Napoleon, Alexander, Hitler, hiding behind. — Osho

Anyone can see that an ass laden with books remains a donkey. A human being laden with the undigested results of a tussle with thoughts and books, however, still passes for wise. — Idries Shah

The first few hours in the cell were quite stimulating. I'd never been in a prison cell before and was quite enjoying the experience. — Tahir Shah

What you are seeking in your retreat, I see clearly in every road and alleyway. — Idries Shah

The skilled artisan uses the same iron to make a horseshoe
As he does for a polished mirror for the King. — Idries Shah

Before the Plan, there is an Idea. Before the Idea, there is a Purpose. Before the Purpose, there is Your Spirit...aching to express Itself — Paresh Shah

When you feel least interested in following the Way which you have entered, this may be the time when it is most appropriate for you. — Idries Shah

The sort of man who, throwing a stone upon the ground, would miss. — Idries Shah

To be obsessed by the idea of freedom, for instance, is itself a form of slavery. Such people are in the chains of the hope of freedom, and are therefore able to do little else than struggle with them. — Idries Shah

The clothes may vary, but the person is the same. — Idries Shah

To copy a virtue in another is more copying than it is virtue. Try to learn what that virtue is based upon. — Idries Shah

Learning without action is like wax without honey.
(Anwar-i-Suhaili) — Idries Shah

Laziness is always your fault. It is the sign that a man has persevered in uselessness for too long. — Idries Shah

Definitions from Mulla Do-Piaza
Supporter: Someone who will say anything. — Idries Shah

It didn't take long for the world to realize that the Shah was an enlightened liberal next to the bloody reactionary regime that followed, and which executed more people in three months than the Shah had done in 30 years. — Alexander Haig

Most of the supposedly Sufi organizations, exercises and "orders" are in fact only of archaeological interest. — Idries Shah

Initially, I wanted to do films with A-list actors when I was struggling. I was hoping that I could also get that platform where I'm launched with Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan or Aamir Khan ... and with them my career could also start, but it didn't happen. And then came 'Queen.' — Kangana Ranaut

Real terror is a crippling experience. You sweat so much that your skin goes all wrinkly like when you've been in the bath all afternoon. And then the scent of your sweat changes. It smells like cat pee, no doubt from the adrenalin. However hard you wash, it won't come off. It smothers you, as your muscles become frozen with acid and your mind paralysed by despair. — Tahir Shah

If you give what can be takes, you are not really giving.
Take what you are given, not what you want to be given.
Take what is given:
Give what cannot be taken. — Idries Shah

Prescribing hard work for the soft, or easy work for the hardy, is generally nonsense. What is always needed in any aim is right effort, right time, right people, right materials. — Idries Shah

The problem is that the spurious, the unreal, the untrue is so much easier to find that it is in danger of becoming the norm. — Idries Shah

Not to be greedy is, paradoxically, the highest form of looking after one's true interests. — Idries Shah

People used to play with toys.
Now the toys play with them. — Idries Shah

Anybody or anything may stand between you and knowledge if you are unfit for it. — Idries Shah

I think love can happen at any age ... it has no age. — Shah Rukh Khan

Much smoke has been seen, and caused great fear of fire - even when no fire ensued. — Idries Shah

[Rahmat Shah Sayel] described what was happening in Afghanistan as a 'war between two elephants' -the US and the Soviet Union- not our war, and said that we Pashtuns were 'like the grass crushed by the hooves of two fierce beasts — Malala Yousafzai

THE BIRD AND THE WATER
A bird which has not heard of fresh water
Dips his beak in salt-water year after year.
(Anwar-i-Suhaili) — Idries Shah

Pakistan's ruler Pervez Musharraf predicted the Taliban will fall for hiding Osama bin Laden. Ex-king Zahir Shah is standing by to replace Mullah Mohammed Omar. And the most ominous sign of all, President Bush has learned all their names. — Argus Hamilton

The ones you love must be the ones you trust, dont give it at a cheap bargain — Priyansh Shah

Right time, right place, right people equals success.
Wrong time, wrong place, wrong people equals most of the real human history. — Idries Shah

None meets harm who knows his capacity. — Idries Shah

Everything man needs is in the world. — Idries Shah

It is necessary to note," says Rumi, "that opposite things work together, even though nominally opposed" (Fihi Ma Fihi). — Idries Shah

Debating whether one trusts or not is a sign that one does not want to trust at all, and therefore is still incapable of it. — Idries Shah

Iran's most formidable modern leader, Reza Shah Pahlavi, was obsessed with the idea of building a steel mill, but in 1941, soon after he assembled all the components, Allied armies invaded Iran, and the project had to be abandoned. — Stephen Kinzer

Whatever the human mind can think clearly it can be achieved. — Qasim Ali Shah

Saying of the Prophet
Sleep
Sleep is the brother of death. — Idries Shah

I LOVE YOU SHAHAN SHAH MOHAMADREZA GOD BLESSE YOU — Mohammed Reza Pahlavi

Our aid is work for the American people. — Rajiv Shah

What's heartbreaking isn't that we can't be together. It's that now, I know better and now; I will never be able to love you or anyone else in the same way again. — Hafsa Shah

I want people to know that movie stars live a normal, middle-class life. — Shah Rukh Khan

Salute to the Thief. Junaid of Baghdad was passing the scene of a public hanging, where a thief was on the scaffold. Junaid bowed towards the criminal. Someone asked him: 'What did you do that?' Junaid said: 'I was bowing before his single-mindedness. For his aim, that man has given his life. — Idries Shah

He constructed a road from Gaur to the river Indus," says Mushtaqui, but it is more likely that Sher Shah only repaired and realigned the road, for there had been a highway along that grid from ancient times. — Abraham Eraly

The Sufi must be able to alternate his thought between the relative and the Absolute, the approximate and the Real. — Idries Shah

Where your hard work is Pre-Determined, Your Goals are Very Determined, Results are Undetermined and your Enjoyment is Post-Determined". Is the Way which lead you to Height of Success. — Kunal Shah

Conviction, far from being based upon reason, is the enemy of reason; because rationality does not change, while convictions do, all the time. — Idries Shah

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? — Tahir Shah

Remember the proverb: 'A sign is enough for the alert, but a thousand counsels are not enough for the negligent. — Idries Shah

Saying of the Prophet
Truth
Speaking the truth to the unjust is the best of holy wars. — Idries Shah

He that is purified by love is pure; and he that is absorbed in the Beloved and hath abandoned all else is a Sufi.
Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah. — Idries Shah

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

My great-great-grandfather was a shah back in the 1800s. Unfortunately, I don't have any gold coins or jewels to show for it. — Sarah Shahi

To say "yes" to the Sufi way is to say "no" to imagined escapes. — Idries Shah

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. — Tahir Shah

One cannot learn from someone whom one distrusts. — Idries Shah

The practice of the Sufis is too sublime to have a formal beginning, — Idries Shah

The institution of teachership is there for this reason, that the learner must learn how to learn. — Idries Shah

You call me an unbeliever. I shall therefore call you a True Believer since a lie is best met with one of similar magnitude. — Idries Shah

A man must be a Salomon before his magical ring will work — Idries Shah

The mere mention of the Farakka Express, which jerks its way eastward each day from Delhi to Calcutta, is enough to throw even a seasoned traveller into fits of apoplexy. At a desert encampment on Namibia's Skeleton Coast, a hard-bitten adventurer had downed a peg of local fire-water then told me the tale. Farakka was a ghost train, he said, haunted by ghouls, Thuggees, and thieves. Only a passenger with a death wish would go anywhere near it. — Tahir Shah

For me it's all about creating chaos.. and then getting away with it. — Hafsa Shah

People in this civilization are starving in the middle of plenty. This is a civilization that is going down, not because it hasn't got the knowledge that would save it, but because nobody will use the knowledge. — Idries Shah

Why do people always wonder whether books are any good, without wondering whether they are themselves in a state to profit from them? — Idries Shah

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. — Idries Shah

The major barrier to understanding is wishful thinking and following that which pleases one. — Idries Shah

In any case, a little danger is a small price to pay for ridding a place of tourists. — Tahir Shah

Learning how to learn involves examining assumptions. Mulla Nasrudin tales very often fulfil this funcition. — Idries Shah

The aspirant has to be guided by a mentor. The stage at which this guidance can take effect is seldom, if ever, perceptible to the learner. — Idries Shah

To bind one free man with love is better than to release a thousand slaves. — Idries Shah

Premature independence is the daughter of conceit. — Idries Shah

He came to the conclusion that humans confused the content with the container.
They would gorge themselves on great plates of inferior food, imagining it to be delicious because there was simply so much of it. Or, they would make half wits their leaders, merely because they were pleasing to the eye, or because their words were spoken in honeyed voices.
And when it came to information, they would champion weighty tomes that contained almost no real content, while shunning small books that imparted real truth. — Tahir Shah

Deep in the sea are riches beyond compare. But if you seek safety, it is on the shore. — Idries Shah

It is no accident that Sufis find that they can connect most constructively with people who are well integrated into the world, as well as having higher aims, and that those who adopt a sensible attitude towards society and life as generally known can usually absorb Sufi teachings very well indeed — Idries Shah

The ability to tell a good route from a terrible one is a valuable skill when leading an expedition. Unfortunately for us all, it was a skill I did not possess. — Tahir Shah

Success is not an end in itself. It should be a means to an end - happiness. If success does not lead to happiness, it is called "failure". — Murad S. Shah

Because there is no challenge, there is no reason to work hard. And with no reason to work hard, we all have become lazy. Lazy people are like cancer. They spread. Before you know it, the entire country is destroyed. — Tahir Shah

Sometimes a lot of us men think we are doing everything for the woman we love, but there is an aspect of a woman a man doesn't understand. — Shah Rukh Khan

The main problem is that most commentators are accustomed to thinking of spiritual schools as 'systems', which are more or less alike, and which depend upon dogma and ritual: and especially upon repetition and the application of continual and standardised pressures upon their followers.
The Sufi way, except in degenerate forms which are not to be classified as Sufic, is entirely different from this. — Idries Shah

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

Definitions from Mulla Do-Piaza
Drugs: Source of the mystical experience of the ignorant. — Idries Shah

We believe that liberty of religious faith is the first and foremost freedom in human society, is a universal value in the international community, and is also the foundation for other political and property rights. Without the universal and equitable liberty of religious faith, a multi-ethnic, multi-religion country would not be able to form a peaceful civil society, or bring about social stability, ethnic solidarity or the nation's prosperity. - THE PASTORS OF THE SHOUWANG CHURCH BEIJING, CHINA, MAY 2011 — Timothy Shah

Worry is a cloud which rains destruction. — Idries Shah

Definitions from Mulla Do-Piaza
Wisdom: Something you can learn without knowing it. — Idries Shah

Definitions from Mulla Do-Piaza
Penitent: Someone who has been made incapable of enjoying himself. — Idries Shah

To send a kiss by messenger. — Idries Shah

If your desire for 'good' is based on greed, it is not good, but greed. — Idries Shah