Talking about straws and camels' backs is just one way of approaching things. If you have enough camels, no backs need be broken.

Sometimes a pessimist is only an optimist with extra information.

If you give what can be taken, you are not really giving. Take what you are given, not what you want to be given. Give what cannot be taken.

Enemies are often former or potential friends who have been denied - or think that they have been denied - something.

... when we are talking about 'Christians' and 'Moslems' we must first make sure that we are talking about people who have an idea, which should be more or less correct, as to what the other is supposed to believe and what he is expected to do as a consequence of that belief.

There is a Persian proverb: 'To test that which has been tested is ignorance.' To try to test something without the means of testing is even worse.

Scholars of the East and West have heroically consecrated their whole working lives to making available, by means of their own disciplines, Sufi literary and philosophical material to the world at large. In many cases they have faithfully recorded the Sufis' own reiteration that the Way of the Sufis cannot be understood by means of the intellect or by ordinary book learning.