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.

A certain person may have, as you say, a wonderful presence; I do not know. What I do know is that he has a perfectly delightful absence.

It is not only a matter of not caring who knows - it is also a matter of knowing who cares.

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?

There is a succession of experiences which together constitute the educational and developmental ripening of the learner, according to the Sufis. People who think that each gain is the goal itself will freeze at any such stage, and cannot learn through successive and superseding lessons.

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.

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.