Toni > Toni's Quotes

“A journey of observation must leave as much as possible to chance. Random movement is the best plan for maximum observation”
― Tahir Shah, Sorcerer's Apprentice

“Calcutta has spectacular over-employment. In the West, where we're obsessed with slashing the numbers of workers for the sake of it, we drool at the idea of more, faster computers, fewer humans. But as we struggle to adopt an ever-changing technology, we lose sight of the satisfaction that only a finely tuned human system can provide.”
― Tahir Shah, Sorcerer's Apprentice: An Incredible Journey into the World of India's Godmen

“He came to the conclusion that humans confused the content with the container.

They would gorge themselves on great plates of inferior food, imagining it to be delicious because there was simply so much of it. Or, they would make half wits their leaders, merely because they were pleasing to the eye, or because their words were spoken in honeyed voices.

And when it came to information, they would champion weighty tomes that contained almost no real content, while shunning small books that imparted real truth.”
― Tahir Shah, Scorpion Soup

“Stages
First I thought that a Teacher must be right in all things.
Then I imagined that my teacher was wrong in many things.
Then I realised what was right and what was wrong.
What was wrong was to remain in either of the first two stages.
What was right was to convey this to everyone.

(Ardabili)”
― Idries Shah, Wisdom of the Idiots

“I don’t believe one reads to escape reality. A person reads to confirm a reality he knows is there, but which he has not experienced.”
― Lawrence Durrell

“Silted-up residues of the years smouldered uninterruptedly—and not without melancholy—in the maroon brickwork of these medieval closes: beyond the cobbles and archways of which (in a more northerly direction) memory also brooded, no less enigmatic and inconsolable, among water-meadows and avenues of trees: the sombre demands of the past becoming at times almost suffocating in their insistence.”
― Anthony Powell, A Question of Upbringing

“I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there ’s a pair of us—don’t tell!
They ’d banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!”
― Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

“so they went off together but where ever they go and whatever happens to themon the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the forest a little boy and his bear will always be playing.”
― A.A. Milne

“Writing is a combination of intangible creative fantasy and appallingly hard work.”
― Anthony Powell

“An exceedingly well-informed report,' said the General. 'You have given yourself the trouble to go into matters thoroughly, I see. That is one of the secrets of success in life.”
― Anthony Powell, The Kindly Ones

“One passes through the world knowing few, if any, of the important things about even the people with whom one has been from time to time in the closest intimacy.”
― Anthony Powell, The Kindly Ones

“My brother is a strange fellow," said Bernard, speaking with terrible bonhomie.”
― Anthony Powell, What's Become of Waring

“Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven't committed.”
― Anthony Powell

“My father used to say that stories are part of the most precious heritage of mankind.”
― Tahir Shah, In Arabian Nights: A Caravan of Moroccan Dreams

“Very few people realise that sex is a psychic and not a physical act. The clumsy coupling of human beings is simply a biological paraphrase of this truth - a primitive method of introducing minds to each other, engaging them. But most people are stuck in the physical aspect, unaware of the poetic rapport which it so clumsily tries to teach.”
― Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar

“How clear, how lovely bright,
How beautiful to sight
Those beams of morning play;
How heaven laughs out with glee
Where, like a bird set free,
Up from the eastern sea
Soars the delightful day.

To-day I shall be strong,
No more shall yield to wrong,
Shall squander life no more;
Days lost, I know not how,
I shall retrieve them now;
Now I shall keep the vow
I never kept before.

Ensanguining the skies
How heavily it dies
Into the west away;
Past touch and sight and sound
Not further to be found,
How hopeless under ground
Falls the remorseful day.”
― A.E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad

“…I once found a list of diseases as yet unclassified by medical science, and among these there occurred the word Islomania, which was described as a rare but by no means unknown affliction of spirit. There are people…who find islands somehow irresistible. The mere knowledge that they are on an island, a little world surrounded by the sea, fills them with an indescribable intoxication. These born “islomanes”…are direct descendents of the Atlanteans”
― Lawrence Durrell, Reflections on a Marine Venus: A Companion to the Landscape of Rhodes

“It is the message, not the man, which is important to the Sufis.”
― Idries Shah, The Sufis

“One life is an absurdly small allowance.”
― Freya Stark

“There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do.”
― Freya Stark

“There can be no happiness if the things we believe are different than the things we do.”
― Freya Stark

“Speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Education breeds confidence. Confidence breeds hope. Hope breeds peace.”
― Confucius

“The complexity of our present trouble suggests as never before that we need to change our present concept of education. Education is not properly an industry, and its proper use is not to serve industries, either by job-training or by industry-subsidized research. It's proper use is to enable citizens to live lives that are economically, politically, socially, and culturally responsible. This cannot be done by gathering or "accessing" what we now call "information" - which is to say facts without context and therefore without priority. A proper education enables young people to put their lives in order, which means knowing what things are more important than other things; it means putting first things first.”
― Wendell Berry

“Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this.”
― Thomas Huxley, Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 1

“It has always seemed strange to me that in our endless discussions about education so little stress is laid on the pleasure of becoming an educated person, the enormous interest it adds to life. To be able to be caught up into the world of thought—that is to be educated."

[Saturday Evening Post, September 27, 1958]”
― Edith Hamilton

“The stupidest man I ever met had a favourite saying. It was: 'What do you think I am, stupid, or something?”
― Idries Shah, Reflections

“When you realise the difference between the container and the content, you will have knowledge.”
― Idries Shah, The Book of the Book

“I do wish you wouldn't argue with me when I'm knitting.”
― Gerald Durrell, My Family and Other Animals

“Many things which are called 'secrets' are only things withheld from people until they can understand or effectively experience them.”
― Idries Shah