Quotes by Teachers - Page 17

The Sufis are unanimous that a Guide (Sheikh) is absolutely essential, though never available on demand: 'the Sufis are not merchants'.
Idries Shah
If the path has been laid down, why the successive appearance of different teachers? Why would anyone reinvent the wheel, if everything were as cosy and sequential as primitive longing so easily convinces us?
Idries Shah
One cannot learn from someone whom one distrusts.
Idries Shah
If everything is done for me... how will I ever learn?
John Flanagan
Please, not again what you studied, how long you spent at it, how many books you wrote, what people thought of you - but: what did you learn?
Idries Shah
One can give or withhold in a manner far more effective, sophisticated, useful, which is quite invisible to people who think that giving or withholding is done by external assessment. If you seek some mark of favour or 'promotion', know that you are not ready for it. Progress comes through capacity to learn, and is irresistible. Nobody can stand between you and knowledge if you are fit for it.
Idries Shah
Anybody or anything may stand between you and knowledge if you are unfit for it.
Idries Shah
It is a Sufi contention that truth is not discovered or maintained by the mere repetition of teachings. It can only be kept understood by the perpetual experience of it. And it is in the experience of truth that the Sufis have always reposed their trust. Sufism is therefore not 'Do as I say and not as I do', or even 'Do as I do', but 'Experience it and you will know'.
Idries Shah
You can learn more in half an hour's direct contact with a source of knowledge (no matter the apparent reason for the contact or the subject of the transaction) than you can in years of formal effort.
Idries Shah
Many things which are called 'secrets' are only things withheld from people until they can understand or effectively experience them.
Idries Shah
You have come a long way, and you do not know it. You have a long way to go, and you do know what that means.
Idries Shah
There is no wisdom where there is no common sense: it cannot under those conditions find any expression.
Idries Shah
None should say: 'I can trust' or 'I cannot trust' until he is a master of the option, of trusting or not trusting.
Idries Shah
The man who knows must discharge a function. The one who does not, cannot arrogate one to himself; he can only try to do so.
Idries Shah
If your desire for 'good' is based on greed, it is not good, but greed.
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
If you seek a teacher, try to become a real student. If you want to be a student, try to find a real teacher.
Idries Shah
If you cannot laugh frequently and genuinely, you have no soul.
Idries Shah
Assume that you are part-hypocrite and part heedless, and you will not be far wrong.
Idries Shah
Never follow any impulse to teach, however strong it might be. The command to teach is not felt as an impulsion.
Idries Shah
Do not try to be humble: learn humility.
Idries Shah
Man (and woman) has an infinite capacity for self-development. Equally, he has an infinite capacity for self-destruction.
Idries Shah
The Sufi is 'One who does not care when something is taken from him, but who does not cease to seek for what he has not.
Idries Shah
Study institutions may become visible when the head is more emptied of imaginings.
Idries Shah
They say: 'Seek wisdom while you have the strength, or you may lose the strength without gaining wisdom.
Idries Shah
The person that you feel yourself to be, according to the Sufis, is a false person, which has no true reality.
Idries Shah
He who knows himself, knows his Lord' means, among other things, that self-deception prevents knowledge.
Idries Shah
It has truly been said that 'Humility is not so much a virtue as a necessity, in order to learn.
Idries Shah
Words have to die if humans are to live.
Idries Shah
Why did I do such-and-such a thing?' is all very well. But what about 'How otherwise could I have done it?
Idries Shah
All approaches to a study or an individual may start with a desire for attention. However they start, they must never end up in this manner.
Idries Shah
You have come a long way, and you do not know it. You have a long way to do, and you do know what that means.
Idries Shah
...action is in fact knowledge in operation. Right action stems from right knowledge. Right knowledge is acquired through the teacher.
Idries Shah
The real generosity is when a man does something generous when nobody knows about it.
Idries Shah
Progress comes through capacity to learn, and is irresistible.
Idries Shah
School is about learning to wait your turn, however long it takes to come, if ever. And how to submit with a show of enthusiasm to the judgment of strangers, even if they are wrong, even if your enthusiasm is phony.
John Taylor Gatto
Learn about hornets from those who have been stung by them.
Idries Shah
Saying of the ProphetInk and BloodThe ink of the learned is holier than the blood of the martyr.
Idries Shah
Opportunity's precious, and time is a sword.
Idries Shah
Teaching is different today. Teachers don’t just stand at the board and lecture while the kids take notes. What we’re ultimately teaching them is to teach themselves.
Tony Danza
Q: What is a fundamental mistake of man's?A: To think that he is alive, when he has merely fallen asleep in life's waiting-room.
Idries Shah
Real generosity is anonymous to the extent that a man should be prepared even to be considered ungenerous rather than explain it to others.
Idries Shah
Deep in the sea are riches beyond compare. But if you seek safety, it is on the shore.
Idries Shah
Will raised both eyebrows. 'Well, you learn a new thing everyday,' he said reflectively.'In your case, that's no exaggeration,' Halt said, completely straight-faced.
John Flanagan
I remember the odd sensation of living in the middle of that experience and feeling, simultaneously, like it was something happening at telescopic distance. Like something I was looking at through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars.
Wally Lamb
Only one in a thousand sits down in the midst of it all and says—I will watch my Father mend this. God must not be treated as a hospital for our broken “toys,” but as our Father.
Oswald Chambers
When we lose sight of God we become hard and dogmatic. We hurl our own petitions at God’s throne and dictate to Him as to what we wish Him to do. We do not worship God, nor do we seek to form the mind of Christ. If we are hard towards God, we will become hard towards other people.
Oswald Chambers
We look upon prayer simply as a means of getting things for ourselves, but the biblical purpose of prayer is that we may get to know God Himself.
Oswald Chambers
To say that 'prayer changes things' is not as close to the truth as saying, 'prayer changes me and then I change things.' God has established things so that prayer, on the basis of redemption, changes the way a person looks at things.
Oswald Chambers
your god may be your little Christian habit - the habit of prayer or Bible reading at certain times of your day. Watch how your Father will upset your schedule if you begin to worship your habit instead of what the habit symbolizes. We say, 'I can't do that right now; this is my time alone with God.' No, this is your time alone with your habit.
Oswald Chambers
TeachingOne hour's teaching is better than a whole night of prayer.
Idries Shah
Do you mind telling me what you pray?""I pray for the wisdom to find meaning in the . . . her death."And have you?""No, Mrs. Aislabie, I find no meaning. But perhaps that's because I'm too small to see a plan so large I rarely get anything but a brief glimpse of it.
Katharine McMahon
Do you mind telling me what you pray?""I pray for the wisdom to find meaning in the . . . her death.""And have you?""No, Mrs. Aislabie, I find no meaning. But perhaps that's because I'm too small to see a plan so large I rarely get anything but a brief glimpse of it.
Katharine McMahon
One should not pray if that prayer is vanity.
Idries Shah
The purpose of prayer is that we get ahold of God, not of the answer.
Oswald Chambers
Prayer is not an exercise, it is the life of the saint. Beware of anything that stops the offering up of prayer.
Oswald Chambers
What a blessed habit I have found my prayer list, morning by morning, it takes me via the Throne of all Grace straight to the intimate personal heart of each one mentioned here, and I know that He Who is not prescribed by time and geography answers immediately.
Oswald Chambers
I want to tell you a growing conviction with me, and that is that as we obey the leadings of the Spirit of God, we enable God to answer the prayers of other people. I mean that our lives, my life, is the answer to someone’s prayer, prayed perhaps centuries ago.It is more and more impossible to me to have programmes and plans because God alone has the plan, and our plans are only apt to hinder Him, and make it necessary for Him to break them up. I have the unspeakable knowledge that my life is the answer to prayers, and that God is blessing me and making me a blessing entirely of His sovereign grace and nothing to do with my merits, saving as I am bold enough to trust His leading and not the dictates of my own wisdom and common sense.
Oswald Chambers
Pray to catch the bus, then run as fast as you can.
Julia Cameron
We tend to use prayer as a last resort, but God wants it to be our first line of defense. We pray when there's nothing else we can do, but God wants us to pray before we do anything at all.Most of us would prefer, however, to spend our time doing something that will get immediate results. We don't want to wait for God to resolve matters in His good time because His idea of 'good time' is seldom in sync with ours.
Oswald Chambers