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Rumi Quotes: 94

  • The garden of love is green without limit and yields many fruits other than sorrow or joy. Love is beyond either condition: without spring, without autumn, it is always fresh.

  • Grief can be the garden of compassion. If you keep your heart open through everything, your pain can become your greatest ally in your life's search for love and wisdom.

  • Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

  • Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field.I'll meet you there.When the soul lies down in that grassthe world is too full to talk about.

  • The wound is the place where the Light enters you.

  • We are born of love; Love is our mother.

  • Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.

  • What you seek is seeking you.

  • The minute I heard my first love story,I started looking for you, not knowinghow blind that was.Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.They're in each other all along.

    The Illuminated Rumi
  • Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.

  • If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?

  • Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free.

  • You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?

  • Forget safety.Live where you fear to live.Destroy your reputation.Be notorious.

  • When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.

  • When I am with you, we stay up all night.When you're not here, I can't go to sleep.Praise God for those two insomnias!And the difference between them.

  • Don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.

    The Essential Rumi
  • Knock, And He'll open the doorVanish, And He'll make you shine like the sunFall, And He'll raise you to the heavensBecome nothing, And He'll turn you into everything.

  • Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.

  • I want to see you.Know your voice.Recognize you when youfirst come 'round the corner.Sense your scent when I come into a room you've just left.Know the lift of your heel,the glide of your foot.Become familiar with the way you purse your lipsthen let them part, just the slightest bit,when I lean in to your spaceand kiss you.I want to know the joy of how you whisper "more

  • My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that, and I intend to end up there.

  • Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.

    Masnavi i Man'avi, the spiritual couplets of Maula
  • This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet.

  • Ignore those that make you fearful and sad, that degrade you back towards disease and death.

  • silence is the language of god, all else is poor translation.

  • Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.

  • In your light I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems. You dance inside my chest where no-one sees you, but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art.

  • The minute I heard my first love story, I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along.

  • Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.

  • Let yourself be drawn by the stronger pull of that which you truly love.

  • There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled.There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled.You feel it, don't you?

  • Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words.

  • Be empty of worrying.Think of who created thought!Why do you stay in prisonWhen the door is so wide open?

    The Essential Rumi
  • This being human is a guest house. Every morning is a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor...Welcome and entertain them all. Treat each guest honorably. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

  • Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation.

  • Be like the sun for grace and mercy. Be like the night to cover others' faults. Be like running water for generosity. Be like death for rage and anger. Be like the Earth for modesty. Appear as you are. Be as you appear.

  • A thousand half-loves must be forsaken to take one whole heart home.

    Words of Paradise: Selected Poems of Rumi
  • We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust.

  • Suffering is a gift. In it is hidden mercy.

  • I know you're tired but come, this is the way.

  • Be melting snow.Wash yourself of yourself.

    The Essential Rumi
  • Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah…it makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.

  • When you go through a hard period,When everything seems to oppose you,... When you feel you cannot even bear one more minute,NEVER GIVE UP!Because it is the time and place that the course will divert!

    The Essential Rumi
  • That which God said to the rose, and caused it to laugh in full-blown beauty, He said to my heart, and made it a hundred times more beautiful.

  • The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell youDon't go back to sleep!You must ask for what you really want.Don't go back to sleep!People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch,The door is round and openDon't go back to sleep!

  • I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way.Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.

  • You were born with potential. You were born with goodness and trust. You were born with ideals and dreams. You were born with greatness. You were born with wings. You are not meant for crawling, so don't. You have wings. Learn to use them and fly.

  • I was dead, then alive.Weeping, then laughing.The power of love came into me,and I became fierce like a lion,then tender like the evening star.

  • Remember. The way you make love is the way God will be with you.

  • Like a sculptor, if necessary,carve a friend out of stone.Realize that your inner sight is blindand try to see a treasure in everyone.

  • Do you know what you are?You are a manuscript oƒ a divine letter.You are a mirror reflecting a noble face. This universe is not outside of you. Look inside yourself;everything that you want, you are already that.

    Hush, Don't Say Anything to God: Passionate Poems of Rumi
  • I am your moon and your moonlight tooI am your flower garden and your water tooI have come all this way, eager for youWithout shoes or shawlI want you to laughTo kill all your worriesTo love youTo nourish you.

  • God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches by means of opposites so that you will have two wings to fly, not one

    The Essential Rumi
  • Give up to grace. The ocean takes care of each wave 'til it gets to shore. You need more help than you know.

    Words of Paradise: Selected Poems of Rumi
  • There is a secret medicine given only to those who hurt so hard they can't hope.The hopers would feel slighted if they knew.

    The Essential Rumi
  • Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone's soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.

  • Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field.I'll meet you there.

  • When someone beats a rug,the blows are not against the rug, but against the dust in it.

  • Love comes with a knife, not some shy question, and not with fears for its reputation!

  • Lovers find secret placesinside this violent worldwhere they make transactions with beauty.

  • Gamble everything for love, if you're a true human being.

  • The truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell, and broke into pieces. Everybody took a piece of it, and they looked at it and thought they had the truth.

  • I will soothe you and heal you,I will bring you roses.I too have been covered with thorns.

  • If in thirst you drink water from a cup, you see God in it. Those who are not in love with God will see only their own faces in it.

  • Give your weakness to one who helps.

  • You think of yourselfas a citizen of the universe.You think you belong to this world of dust and matter.Out of this dustyou have created a personal image,and have forgottenabout the essence of your true origin

    Hush, Don't Say Anything to God: Passionate Poems of Rumi
  • This place is a dream. Only a sleeper considers it real. Then death comes like dawn, and you wake up laughing at what you thought was your grief.

  • The ground's generosity takes in our compost and grows beauty! Try to be more like the ground.

  • I am yours.Don't give myself back to me.

  • Your heart is the size of an ocean. Go find yourself in its hidden depths.

  • Don't try to steer the boat. Don't open shop for yourself. Listen. Keep silent. You are not God's mouthpiece. Try to be an ear, And if you do speak, ask for explanations.

    The Essential Rumi
  • You dance inside my chest,where no one sees you,but sometimes I do, and thatsight becomes this art.

  • Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.

  • This poetry. I never know what I'm going to say.

  • You are the Truth from foot to brow. Now, what else would you like to know?

  • You have forgotten the Onewho doesn't care about ownership,who doesn't try to turn a profitfrom every human exchange.

    The Essential Rumi
  • My friend, you thought you lost Him;that all your life you've been separated from Him.Filled with wonder, you've always looked outside for Him,and haven't searched within your own house.

  • You're water. We're the millstone.You're wind. We're dust blown up into shapes.You're spirit. We're the opening and closing of our hands. You're the clarity.We're the language that tries to say it.You're joy. We're all the different kinds of laughing.

    The Essential Rumi
  • Woman is the light of God.

  • You soak up my soul and mingle me. Each drop of my blood cries out to the earth. We are partners, blended as one.

  • در غم ما روزها بی گاه شدروزها با سوزها همراه شد

  • When soul risesInto lipsYou feel the kiss You have wanted

  • How will you know the difficulties of being human, if you are always flying off to blue perfection? Where will you plant your grief seeds? Workers need ground to scrape and hoe, not the sky of unspecified desire.

  • You are an ocean in a drop of dew,all the universes in a thin sack of blood.What are these pleasures then,these joys, these worldsthat you keep reaching for,hoping they will make you more alive?

  • Bitter your acts, bitter am I,Kindness your deeds, kindness am I,Pleasant and gentle, so you are,Fine honeyed lips and sweet talker.

    Love: The Joy That Wounds: The Love Poems of Rumi
  • Knowledge that is acquiredis not like this. Those who have it worry ifaudiences like it or not.It's a bait for popularity.Disputational knowing wants customers.It has no soul...The only real customer is God.Chew quietlyyour sweet sugarcane God-Love, and stayplayfully childish.

    The Essential Rumi
  • Soul receives from soul that knowledge, therefore not by book nor from tongue. If knowledge of mysteries come after emptiness of mind, that is illumination of heart.

  • This poetry. I never know what I'm going to say.I don't plan it.When I'm outside the saying of it,I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.

    The Essential Rumi
  • A craftsman pulled a reed from the reedbed,cut holes in it, and called it a human being.Since then, it's been wailing a tender agonyof parting, never mentioning the skillthat gave it life as a flute

  • If it is bread that you seek, you will have bread. If it is the soul you seek, you will find the soul. If you understand this secret, you know you are that which you seek.

  • Where lowland is, that's where water goes. All medicine wants is pain to cure.

  • It is certain that an atom of goodness on the path of faith is never lost.

  • The way you make love is the way God will be with you.

  • If you are seeking, seek us with joyFor we live in the kingdom of joy.Do not give your heart to anything elseBut to the love of those who are clear joy,Do not stray into the neighborhood of despair.For there are hopes: they are real, they exist –Do not go in the direction of darkness –I tell you: suns exist.