Idries Shah Quotes

“The great poet Hafiz says that you should dye your prayer-carpet with wine if your teacher tells you to do so.”

“The great poet Hafiz says that you should dye your prayer-carpet with wine if your teacher tells you to do so.”

“There is no pleasure without a tincture of bitterness.”

“A man must be a Salomon before his magical ring will work. (Hafiz)”

“Every child has known God,Not the God of names,Not the God of don'ts,Not the God who ever doesAnything weird,But the God who knows only 4 wordsAnd keeps repeating them, saying:"Come Dance with Me."Come Dance.”

“Books had rescued me when i most needed saving... Books were smarter than me and words inspired me... to try something new, charge forward without a clear understanding of what would happen next, because "given something like death, what does it matter if one looks foolish now and then, or tries too hard, or cares too deeply?"In the end, Thoreau, Whitman, Hafiz, and a dozen other writers put me up to the task of seeing if I dared to "live a life worth living.”

“I'm a spiritual person, she said. "I believe in Allah, you know, though I don't always call It 'Allah' and I pray the way I want to pray. Sometimes I just look out at the stars and this love-fear thing comes over me, you know? And sometimes I might sit in a Christian church listening to them talk about Isa with a book of Hafiz in my hands instead of the hymnal. And you know what, Yusef? Sometimes, every once in a while, I get out my old rug and I pray like Muhammad prayed. I never learned the shit in Arabic and my knees are uncovered, but if Allah has a problem with that then what kind of Allah do we believe in?”

“…The love of his youthAppeared as in a dreamAnd this ageing loverWent mad with love.The youth robbed him ofReason and his chastity.In pursuit of his Beloved, mad, deranged,He was from kith and kin estranged.The fire of the rose’s cheekBurnt the nightingale’s heart;The laughing flameTormented the devoted moth…”

“There is no faith in the smile of the rose”

“My whole desire is to burn myself away.”

“When no one is looking,I swallow deserts and cloudsand chew on mountainsknowing they are sweet bones!When no one is lookingand I want to kiss God,I just lift my own hand to my mouth.”