Quotes by Sufis

People used to play with toys.Now the toys play with them.
Idries Shah
People today are in danger of drowning in information; but, because they have been taught that information is useful, they are more willing to drown than they need be. If they could handle information, they would not have to drown at all.
Idries Shah
It is not only a matter of not caring who knows - it is also a matter of knowing who cares.
Idries Shah
To 'see both sides' of a problem is the surest way to prevent its complete solution. Because there are always more than two sides.
Idries Shah
A motto of the human race: Let me do as I like, and give me approval as well.
Idries Shah
Banality is like boredom: bored people are boring people, people who think that things are banal are themselves banal.Interesting people can find something interesting in all things.
Idries Shah
Investigation after declaration of submission leads astray.
Wasif Ali Wasif
Sleep is a mirror of life in which can be seen the reflection of death.
Wasif Ali Wasif
If a society has no moral foundations then success is a threat. Every successful person thinks everyone else is a failure, and this is the proof of failure. Conquering the world and dying empty-handed on foreign shores is a paradox of such success.
Wasif Ali Wasif
When the eye becomes the heart, the heart becomes the eye.
Wasif Ali Wasif
He who has no light in his heart, what will he gain from the festival of lamps.
Wasif Ali Wasif
When the child is ill, the mother will know how to pray.
Wasif Ali Wasif
In reality, every reality is a veil over reality.
Wasif Ali Wasif
As long as man was in the moolight he desired to reach the moon…there was bliss in the moonlight but the moon itself was distant. Moonlight was near but man longed for the moon…man reached the moon but there he was without moonlight. If one reaches the moon one does not find moonlight any longer and if one is in moonlight one does not find the moon. It is a strange fact that one is only because of the other…one is a sign of the other yet both are forever separate. If the Beloved is the Moon, moonlight is His remembrance. When the Beloved is present His remembrance is not and when His remembrance is present the Beloved is not. Proximity to one is distance from the other, Union with one is separation from the other. Thus union is hidden in every separation and separation in every union.
Wasif Ali Wasif
The ocean sleeps. The ocean wakes. And the waking of the ocean is the waking of the soul. At midnight wakefulness springs from within the ocean.
Wasif Ali Wasif
Life is not only Newton, it is also Milton.
Wasif Ali Wasif
Do not destroy anybody’s peace. You will find peace.
Wasif Ali Wasif
In love, there is no distinction between success and failure. If love remains then even separation is union otherwise even union is separation.
Wasif Ali Wasif
The period before the dawn of knowledge is called the age of darkness.
Wasif Ali Wasif
One who has no beloved in the country can never love the country.
Wasif Ali Wasif
The world is ancient, but it has not lost its newness.
Wasif Ali Wasif
A man is happy who is happy with his Naseeb(allotted portion).
Wasif Ali Wasif
Sleep is the boundary between being/existence and not-being/non-existence.
Wasif Ali Wasif
We wish to become one thing or another, rather we wish to become everything and in this pursuit of becoming everything we only end up becoming idiots.
Wasif Ali Wasif
This life is but a dream. A state of sleep but how unfortunate that man's eyes open only when they are about to be closed (forever).
Wasif Ali Wasif
In order to spend out our time (life) we sell some of this time. We work for someone, we labour. In freedom we do slavery.
Wasif Ali Wasif
There can only be two contexts of your life. Either you are the author of your life, or He (the Creator) is the author of your life. People who feel that their creation is the responsibility of the Creator, find opportunities unexpectedly. Those who feel that their lives are their own, have to fashion their own means.
Wasif Ali Wasif
In the bosom of success lie not delights but deprivations
Wasif Ali Wasif
Death is the protector of life and life is the process of death.
Wasif Ali Wasif
People cannot handle prejudice because they try to deal with the symptom. Prejudice is the symptom, wrong assumptions are the cause.'Prejudice is the daughter of assumption.
Idries Shah
Have you noticed how many people who walk in the shade curse the Sun?
Idries Shah
Instant Reading. A certain famous Fakir was claiming in the village that he could teach an illiterate person to read by a lightning technique. Nasrudin stepped out of the crowd: 'Very well, teach me – now.' The Fakir touched the Mulla's forehead, and said: 'Now go home immediately and read a book.' Half an our later Nasrudin was back in the market-place, clutching a book. The Fakir had gone on his way. 'Can you read now, Mulla?' the people asked him. 'Yes, I can read – but that is not the point. Where is that charlatan?' 'How can he be a charlatan if he has caused you to read without learning?' 'Because this book, which is authoritative, says: “All Fakirs are frauds”.
Idries Shah
The Sufi way is through knowledge and practice, not through intellect and talk.
Idries Shah
But one may say something and yet not be able to do it. Try, for instance, lifting yourself up by the bootstraps.
Idries Shah
Self-mortification, far from producing liberation from material things, is far more likely to cause either an unhinged mind, delusions or a masochistic taste for more suffering, experienced, of course, as joy.
Idries Shah
It is the message, not the man, which is important to the Sufis.
Idries Shah
You must empty out the dirty water before you fill the pitcher with clean.
Idries Shah
The sufis believe that they can experience something more complete.
Idries Shah
The union of the mind and intuition which brings about illumination, and the development which the Sufis seek, is based upon love.
Idries Shah
Good. Show me a man who thinks that he knows what 'good' is, and I will probably be able to show you a horror of a person. Show me a person who really knows what 'good' is, and I will show you that he almost never uses the word.
Idries Shah
What is sometimes thought to be clever is, significantly often, merely an advanced form of foolishness.
Idries Shah
The stupidest man I ever met had a favourite saying.It was:'What do you think I am, stupid, or something?
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
A great deal of thought is only a substitute for the thoughts that the individual would really find useful at the time.
Idries Shah
Water shrinks wool, urgency shrinks time.Shrinkage may be an advantage or the reverse, according to expectation.
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
Greed harms you: generosity helps you. This is why is has been said: 'Greed is the mother of incapacity'.
Idries Shah
Learn to be as analytical about things of which you are credulous as you are of those which you criticise.
Idries Shah
Who is the wrong person to criticise?You
Idries Shah
When the ignorant have become numerous or powerful enough, they have been referred to by a special name. This names is 'the Wise'.
Idries Shah
If you want to strengthen an enemy and make him exult - hate him.
Idries Shah
I have heard all that you have had to say to me on your problems.You ask me what to do about them.It is my view that your real problem is that you are a member of the human race.Face that one first.
Idries Shah
You are still adrift while you still think that a means is an end.
Idries Shah
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.
Idries Shah
Contrary to Expectation. A wise man, the wonder of his age, taught his disciples from a seemingly inexhaustible store of wisdom. He attributed all his knowledge to a thick tome which was kept in a place of honour in his room. The sage would allow nobody to open the volume. When he died, those who had surrounded him, regarding themselves as his heirs, ran to open the book, anxious to possess what it contained. They were surprised, confused and disappointed when they found that there was writing on only one page. They became even more bewildered and then annoyed when they tried to penetrate the meaning of the phrase which met their eyes. It was: 'When you realise the difference between the container and the content, you will have knowledge.
Idries Shah
In the modern world we are in a paradoxical situation; because although in theory man knows that he can extend his attention to something and then remove it, he very often does not do so. In many areas he does not look at something and then detach from it, and look at something else.Once he has found something to interest himself in, he cannot detach himself from it efficiently, and therefore he cannot be objective. Note that, in most if not all languages, we have words like 'objectivity' which leads people to imagine that they have it, or can easily use it. That is equivalent (in reality if not in theory) to saying 'I know the word “gold”, so I am rich.
Idries Shah
Sufism, the "secret tradition," is not available on the basis of assumptions which belong to another world, the world of intellect.
Idries Shah
If a pot can multiply. One day Nasrudin lent his cooking pots to a neighbour, who was giving a feast. The neighbour returned them, together with one extra one – a very tiny pot. 'What is this?' asked Nasrudin. 'According to law, I have given you the offspring of your property which was born when the pots were in my care,' said the joker. Shortly afterwards Nasrudin borrowed his neighbour's pots, but did not return them. The man came round to get them back. 'Alas!' said Nasrudin, 'they are dead. We have established, have we not, that pots are mortal?'.
Idries Shah
Dramatic. A well developed sense of the dramatic has values beyond what people usually imagine. One of these is to realise the limitations of a sense of the dramatic.
Idries Shah
The Book of Wisdom. Simab said: 'I shall sell the Book of Wisdom for a hundred gold pieces, and some people will say that it is cheap.' Yunus Marmar said to him: 'And I shall give away the key to understanding it, and almost none shall take it, even free of charge.
Idries Shah