Shah Jahan Quotes

The world believes it was built by love but reading Shah Jahan's own words on the Taj, one could say it was grief that built the Taj Mahal and it was sorrow that saw it through sixteen years till completion. ~ Aysha Taryam

Shah Jahan who proved
an emperor to be shorter than a lover,
who turned a grave into a temple
who gave his beloved a place of God
and converted love into a prayer. ~ Suman Pokhrel

Shah Jahan built Taj Mahal because he was a king, I wrote a beautiful book for my wife, though I was never an Author… ~ Ved Nishad

We entered the Taj Mahal, the most romantic place on the planet, and possibly the most beautiful building on earth. We ate curry with our driver in a Delhi street café late at night and had the best chicken tikka I've ever tasted in an Agra restaurant. After the madness of Delhi, we were astonished that Agra could be even more mental. And we loved it. We marvelled at the architecture of the Red Fort, where Shah Jahan spent the last three years of his life, imprisoned and staring across at the Taj Mahal, the tomb of his favourite wife. We spent two days in a village constructed specifically for tiger safaris, although I didn't see a tiger, my wife and son were more fortunate. We noticed in Mussoorie, 230 miles from the Tibetan border, evidence of Tibetan features in the faces of the Indians, and we paid just 770 rupees for the three of us to eat heartily in a Tibetan restaurant. Walking along the road accompanied by a cow became as common place as seeing a whole family of four without crash helmets on a motorcycle, a car going around a roundabout the wrong way, and cars approaching towards us on the wrong side of a duel carriageway. India has no traffic rules it seems. ~ Karl Wiggins

MAGHRIBI: Learning is in activity. Learning through words alone is minor activity. ~ Idries Shah

Change; those who adapt to change survive,those who refuse to adapt perish ......and those who set the change lead. ~ Ketan R Shah

The sight of God in woman is the most perfect of all. Ibn Arabi. ~ Idries Shah

Put your dough into the oven when it is hot:
After making sure that it is in fact dough. ~ Idries Shah

Greed harms you: generosity helps you. This is why it has been said: 'Greed is the mother of incapacity'. ~ Idries Shah

The war against jihadism has been chronically misunderstood because of our failure to acknowledge the religious motives of Muslim jihadists. This failure began in 1979 with the Iranian revolution. Trapped in our Western secularist paradigms, we interpreted the uprising against the Shah as an anti-colonial revolt against a "brutal" autocrat propped up by the West for its own exploitative economic and geostrategic purposes. The aim of the revolution, the argument went, was to create a government more sympathetic to national sovereignty and Western pluralistic government. However, it soon became clear with the political triumph of the Ayatollah Khomeini that the revolution was in the main a religious one, inspired in part by anger at the Shah's secularization, modernization, and liberalization policies. As Khomeini said in 1962, the Shah's regime was "fundamentally opposed to Islam itself and the existence of a religious class. ~ Anonymous

abandonment of spiritual values which makes us stand aghast.' The Mir answered: 'Neither could you provide entertainment for your people, nor could you bind them to your person. To call them "my people ~ Idries Shah

I ask about the sky, but the answer is about a rope. ~ Idries Shah

The bowl is warmer than the soup. ~ Idries Shah

Kill hatredness by passing smiles. ~ Shah Wakhani

There's nothing quite like a good quest for getting your blood pumping. ~ Tahir Shah

The mere mention of the Farakka Express, which jerks its way eastward each day from Delhi to Calcutta, is enough to throw even a seasoned traveller into fits of apoplexy. At a desert encampment on Namibia's Skeleton Coast, a hard-bitten adventurer had downed a peg of local fire-water then told me the tale. Farakka was a ghost train, he said, haunted by ghouls, Thuggees, and thieves. Only a passenger with a death wish would go anywhere near it. ~ Tahir Shah

On a hard jungle journey nothing is so important as having a team you can trust. ~ Tahir Shah

I want people to know that movie stars live a normal, middle-class life. ~ Shah Rukh Khan

Proverbs and truisms are for this reason dangerous, because they produce blindness or non-thought. ~ Idries Shah

The false student is the one whose eyes are fixed upon heaven because his feet are planted in mud. ~ Idries Shah

My favorite dish is tandoori chicken. ~ Shah Rukh Khan

Forms of Love: A man once decided that all perfection and beauty was in the tree. It gave fruit, shelter, materials for manufacturers. It did this, too, without apparently making demands. It was there for 'good' purposes. So he taught people that 'tree' was 'good'.
Everyone eventually worshipped in forests and groves, and they loved trees. This pure occupation diverted most human attention for perhaps 10,000 years. These people mistook the immediate for the Real. So it is with man's present ideas about love.
His most sublime Ideas about love, if he but knew it, can be called the lowest of the possible perceptions of real love. ~ Idries Shah, Reflections

The lightning said to the oak tree: 'Stand aside, or take what is coming to you! ~ Idries Shah

I am like a kid. I tell my family and friends I'm like a kid. ~ Shah Rukh Khan

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. ~ Idries Shah

In the nineteenth century, cholera struck the most modern, prosperous cities in the world, killing rich and poor alike, from Paris and London to New York City and New Orleans. In 1836, it felled King Charles X in Italy; in 1849, President James Polk in New Orleans; in 1893, the composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in St. Petersburg. ~ Sonia Shah

Sufism," according to the Sufi, "is an adventure in living, necessary adventure. ~ Idries Shah

A little imagination goes a long way in Fes. ~ Tahir Shah

In todays world the ones you trust are the ones who betray you who are your true friends ? ~ Priyansh Shah

Disappointment cannot exist without expectation. The expected apricot is never as sweet when it reaches the mouth. ~ Idries Shah

The major barrier to understanding is wishful thinking and following that which pleases one. ~ Idries Shah

They have fixed our nutrition and arranged our life-span. More than this, and ahead of this, efforts will not be productive. ~ Idries Shah

Honesty never was the best policy.That proverb was only intended for those who had no money,no dignity and no suitable standard of living.Don't give me such shoddy talk.Honesty breeds objectionable implications.If we were always honest with each other,we would have more enemies,there would be no point in achieving our goals,there would be more suicides and above all every person's weaknesses would be exposed."
-Tasmin Jahan,The root of all Evil ~ Tasmin Jahan

Any society which enjoins its members to adhere to both of these (politeness and truth) is a fraud. ~ Idries Shah

among roses, be a rose, among thorns, be a thorn ~ Idries Shah

If you cannot laugh frequently and genuinely, you have no soul. ~ Idries Shah

My great-great-grandfather was a shah back in the 1800s. Unfortunately, I don't have any gold coins or jewels to show for it. ~ Sarah Shahi

Poor greedy one, wherever he runs
He's after food, and death is after him.
(Saadi) ~ Idries Shah

Those who say 'I am ready to learn', or 'I am not ready to learn' are as often mistaken as they are correct in their surmise. ~ Idries Shah

Wisdom gives honour to nobility, and nobility to everything else. ~ Idries Shah

The Sufi is one who does what others do – when it is necessary. He is also one who does what others cannot do – when it is indicated. ~ Idries Shah

The essence of the Sufi operation is to give, rather than to be served. Although almost all cultures pay lip-service to this as an ideal, the failure to really operate it means the mental, the psychological, posture which unlocks the greater capacity of the consciousness is not achieved where this element is lacking, and so people do not learn. You can't cheat in this game. ~ Idries Shah, A Perfumed Scorpion

The desert was bad, but nothing could compare with the horrors of a tropical rain forest. ~ Tahir Shah

In the 1950s, Pakistan allied with the United States in something called the Central Treaty Organization. We were lined up with, at that time, Iran, ruled by the Shah, and Pakistan and Turkey as a southward shield against Soviet expansion toward the warm waters of the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf. It was part of the containment strategy. ~ Wesley Clark