History is not usually what has happened. History is what some people have thought to be significant.
Idries ShahMaterialism, attachment to things of the world, includes pride. Many religious people suffer from pride: taking pleasure or even delight in being good, or religious.
Idries ShahThe 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 ShahIf 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.
Idries ShahScholars 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.
Idries Shah